Looking for new fellows
EC meeting on 21 June
by Sigrid Elmer
On June 21st 2012 the Executive Committee held its first meeting after the DFG´s important decision on June 15th to support the excellence status of the University of Konstanz until 2017. For the Zukunftskolleg this means that up to five 5-year Research Fellowships, fifteen ZIF Marie Curie 2-year Postdoctoral Fellowships and eight ZIF Marie Curie 5-year Research Fellowships can be offered to new fellows. Therefore these calls for application were the EC´s main topic to talk about in its meeting. For all EC-members it was important to get to know, how the exact guideline of the application process will go on and how the candidates are selected. The EC-members suggested also to involve the actual fellows in the selection of the candidates and not only representatives of the departments or external experts. Because there is a lack of women in the selection committee, the EC decided to nominate a fellows' representative.
Besides the calls for application some applications of research fellows for co-funding were treated and passed the EC: Julia Jones applied for a student assistant position for four months, Malte Drescher for a Scientific Retreat at the Schloss Marbach in September 2012 and Jure Demsar for an electro-optic modulator for Femtosecond Electron Diffraction. Also accepted by the EC were the nominations/prolongations of Senior Fellowships: Viktor Kabanovs Fellowship was prolonged for two months and the Fellowship of Hans Adler was granted. Although all applications were accepted, it was obvious that each EC-member acts responsibly and with caution with the given money.
Thomas Voigtmann reported shortly about the “Tacit Knowledge Group” that met several times. As usual one of the last topics of the EC meeting were some informations by the director concerning mainly some co-fundings below 3.000 Euro which therefore didn’t have to pass the EC, but were granted by the director himself. The meeting finished with an outlook to the next meeting, which will be held on July 12th 2012.
This report by Sigrid Elmer can be downloaded here.