Interview Thomas Böttcher

In my opinion, there are various approaches. I’ll list the most important ones here:

1) Universities require correspondingly sound university funding that allows them more flexibility and gives them the financial freedom to make competitive retention offers. Especially professors appointed for the first time often receive less competitive financial and personnel resources.

2) The equipping of universities in Germany with positions funded through the university budget and permanent positions needs to be significantly improved. In my view, the enormous dependence on external funding at German universities is an obstacle to their expedient long-term orientation and the sustainability of research. At the same time, a larger number of non-professorial positions need to be created, which would be important not only for the continuity of the research work in the research groups or the maintenance of Core Facilities but could also offer career options in academia beyond a professorship.

3) The German university landscape requires an open tenure track system that is consistent with the plurality of the qualification pathways to a professorship. I need to go into further depth here.

I consider the variety of possible ways to qualify for a tenured professorship to be one of the major strengths of the German system. These range from temporary junior professorships and independent research groups to traditional Habilitation (postdoctoral qualification) at a chair. The different pathways represent individual solutions that are suited to different research personalities and ensure a diversity of perspectives and approaches. However, above all for the transition from a temporary position to a tenured professorship a change of location is still almost always indispensable. Such a change of location in the early stages of postdoctoral training is quite logical in order to progress personally in terms of methodology or content and to develop a research profile that is independent of the doctorate. The further move to autonomous project management and staff leadership consolidates this independent research profile, and the junior research group leaders or junior professors find themselves on the direct route to becoming eligible for a full professorship. The research profile develops in alignment with the academic setting at a university and merges in numerous collaborations and alliances with local partners in research and science. At the same time, candidates generally become eligible for a full professorship when they are in their mid-30 or early 40s, many academics are then in long-term relationships and have children. The obligation to be mobile at this stage is therefore not always advantageous both from an academic and a private point of view. This often leads to discrimination against women and certainly discourages many bright minds from a career in science and research – at previous qualification levels too. In the long run, better long-term perspectives for young scientists would therefore also be in the interest of the continuity and planning reliability of Collaborative Research Centres and cluster initiatives.

Although there is meanwhile a growing number of tenure track positions, these, however, so far do not integrate well in the existing pluralistic qualification system. Tenure track positions compete with the existing qualification pathways by reserving positions for permanent professorships in an exclusive way and in so doing reduce the pool of positions available for other qualification pathways. At the same time, selection is shifted to a very early stage, at which often neither an independent research profile nor many of the other qualification criteria for a professorship are clearly recognizable. That’s why – in my opinion – better possibilities for a transparent open tenure model need to be developed; a tenure model where all early career researchers, regardless of their actual Habilitation-equivalent qualification pathway and depending solely on their performance, would be given the opportunity for a permanent professorship. The variant I would prefer would be for universities to be free to fill – for example – 20 percent of all professorships without a tender procedure. Whether a candidate is qualified for the position would be assessed by an external panel of experts as in a tenure review. This would create openings for universities to retain the best minds in a particular place and be able to plan their permanent integration in research initiatives as well as their strategic orientation. It would enhance family-friendliness and continuity at the universities and open up long-term perspectives for outstanding early career researchers. A positive side-effect would be that the number of pro forma tenders for professorships where the preferred in-house candidate is already known would decrease. Such tenders are frustrating for external applicants and an unnecessary waste of time for everyone involved

I think it’s especially important to trust young researchers, give them freedom and meet them at eye level. This already works very well at the University of Konstanz, but there still seems to be considerable differences between departments. Standardizing best practice would be desirable.

Establishing – in a suitable form – the open tenure model in Konstanz that I mentioned before would naturally play a really pioneering role. I think that not only the best early career researchers would profit from this in the long run but also the University of Konstanz.

Funds are never distributed evenly in science, that’s naturally also the case at the Zukunftskolleg. I think in a competitive environment it’s right that attractive funding conditions are made available for the best projects and minds. As I’ll explain later on, it would, however, be desirable if the Zukunftskolleg would open up more within the university towards independent early career researchers.

I had the choice of four universities at that time, which I had looked at more closely as a host institution for my Emmy Noether application. An important criterion for me was which additional options were in place to support early career researchers at the respective universities. After all, if my main application had failed, I would have needed alternatives. With the Zukunftskolleg, the University of Konstanz offered me the best conditions for setting up a junior research group. Apart from financial support, what particularly attracted me was the opportunity for interdisciplinary exchange and networking with other early career researchers.

Our research aims to decipher the chemistry of microbial interactions and to develop substances with which the behaviour and virulence of bacterial pathogens can be controlled in a targeted way. We’ve conducted a large number of exciting projects on this topic in my working group over the last years. Among others, we were able to develop new, highly specific antibiotics that only inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria and do not compromise benign microbes. By studying microbial metabolites, we’ve been able to gain a better understanding of the interactions of bacteria that lead to infections in patients with cystic fibrosis. In addition, we were able to develop new methods which make it possible to disarm pathogens in a targeted way and thus render them harmless. We now want to build further on these results and assemble a comprehensive chemical toolbox, which should facilitate precision interventions in the human microbiome.

The Zukunftskolleg has given me the freedom to pursue a lot of exciting ideas. To try out whether a new project idea is viable, you need funding for exploratory studies. However, the programmes of national and international sponsors generally don’t support these. The uncomplicated procedure when applying for funding at the Zukunftskolleg through the Co-Funding Programme allowed me to react flexibly to new developments and dare to take the first steps in new directions in my research. This made a significant contribution to the productivity of our research and the development of our research profile

For me, the Jour fixe is the social centrepiece of the Zukunftskolleg. Here, the early career researchers meet up and can exchange thoughts and ideas as well as network. The time needed for participating in the Jour fixe is manageable. What I find particularly enriching about the Jour fixe is that you broaden your horizons and learn to understand the cultures of other disciplines. I find exchanging thoughts and ideas across the boundaries of individual disciplines very stimulating. Even if the connections with your own research tend to be rare, insights into unfamiliar domains sharpen your own thinking and spark creativity. I consider personal conversations on the fringe of these meetings to be particularly important because they offer an opportunity to talk to each other about the experiences and challenges of an independent academic career.

For me, it’s paramount that the Zukunftskolleg focuses on young researchers who are directly in the process of qualifying for a tenured professorship. In my view, this should be the most important target group because they have hardly any other possibilities to exchange views and ideas nor are their interests represented. The step to an independent academic career poses a lot of challenges and offers many opportunities that need to be recognized and harnessed. A community at the same stage in their careers can mutually support each other and make optimal use of synergies. I would therefore suggest integrating all the independent early career researchers who come under the Konstanz Code of Practice into the Zukunftskolleg. This does not have to mean that everyone is given the same resources or the same fellowship status (see too my point above on the plurality of qualification pathways to a professorship). First approaches for such integration already exist. Early career researchers from the whole university are already eligible to submit applications for many tenders issued by the Zukunftskolleg. So why not let everybody take part and build up a strong community?

At this point, I would like to highlight another advantage of the Zukunftskolleg: The central visibility of the funding opportunities and support measures that the University of Konstanz has to offer for early career researchers. For example, I have the impression that above all my colleagues at the Zukunftskolleg make successful use of the individual mentorship and coaching programmes in place to support them on their way to a professorship.

At the same time, in my view it would be important to place a greater focus on support for individual researchers and for projects (e.g. co-funding). Additional activities are enriching, but the benefit for the fellows and their research projects should be to the forefront. This means thinking about what the Zukunftskolleg can do for the fellows in order, for example, to help them with projects, publications, teaching or their personal development. 

In the case of internal calls for proposals for funding, I consider it important that the Zukunftskolleg keeps the effort needed to submit an application to a minimum and as unbureaucratic as possible and makes the award criteria as permissive as possible. The Zukunftkolleg fellows have already demonstrated in many ways that they are well qualified, and I’m convinced that the best young minds can easily be trusted to a greater degree to make the best possible use of their funding.   

Furthermore, I consider the Zukunftskolleg’s long-term institutionalization and a sound financial base to be deciding factors in order not to have to ride solely on the waves of temporary funding.

Building up an independent research group and developing your own autonomous research profile in biological chemistry requires considerable financial resources. Flexible funding and a fast, uncomplicated application procedure are pivotal to being able to pursue innovative research ideas and launch exploratory studies. The funding opportunities provided by the Zukunftskolleg were therefore even one of the main reasons why I decided to come to Konstanz.
During my time at the Zukunftskolleg, I profited above all from co-funding and the Investment Programme as well as support for an interdisciplinary collaboration project and for Transdepartmental Collaborative Teaching. In this way, the funding instruments of the Zukunftskolleg have both enriched my research profile and helped to enhance my teaching profile.

A resounding YES. The Zukunftskolleg quite simply offers early career researchers fantastic conditions for their further development.

My partner (who is also a Zukunftskolleg Fellow) and I have both profited from the equal opportunity measures and from the support of the Zukunftskolleg. With the birth of our daughter in 2016, the Kinderhaus childcare centre was very important for us, and we’re highly satisfied with the possibilities and quality of the childcare there.

I feel and have always felt very comfortable at the University of Konstanz. I would call my working group my home, and I’m very happy that a large part of my wonderful team is now accompanying me to Vienna.

In 2015, I was elected as a member of Die Junge Akademie at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. That opened up a lot of possibilities for me personally – especially also beyond my own research interests. Another special honour for me was the award of the Manfred Fuchs Prize of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2019. The ERC Consolidator Grant that followed now feels for me personally to a certain degree like reaching the top of Mount Everest and will have a decisive impact on our further research in the next years.

Shortly before the pandemic reached Germany, we had already begun to apply the existing methods we use to search for enzyme inhibitors of the proteases of the novel coronavirus. Fortunately, we had the possibility to continue this research with a small part of the team while the university was closed. This posed many challenges, of course, such as how to keep a laboratory up and running when almost the entire infrastructure is paralyzed. In the end, we were able to validate a new technique with which to search for chemical probes that make it possible to find inhibitors against enzymes essential for the replication of the coronavirus. Here, we were also able to put forward concrete suggestions for active molecules that could be used as agents against the coronavirus. Our best candidate is currently being evaluated against the virus in a cell model.

Our research is highly interdisciplinary and involves the fields of chemistry and microbiology. Since October 2020 I’m working at the University of Vienna as Professor for Microbial Biochemistry, a position bridging the Faculty of Chemistry and the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science. In addition, the University of Vienna has built up an excellent infrastructure in the life sciences over the past years that fits perfectly with our research interests. It is also very well equipped, and that makes the overall package very attractive. Research into the human microbiome is currently a hot topic and also a specialization at the University of Vienna. I’m already looking forward to exciting research collaborations and hope to be able to add new elements to our understanding of chemical interactions in the human microbiome.

What’s more, Vienna is a very beautiful city with a high quality of life. Nonetheless, changing location is a challenge because of the dual career situation in our family. But I’m looking forward to hopefully being able to feel at home soon with my family in Vienna.