CRC Transregio 221|Equal Opportunities

The gender equality funds will be primarily used to support female scientists to develop and advance their academic career and to improve the compatibility of work in research and family life/duties. The proposed resources will concentrate on two critical areas: (i) pregnancy and childcare and (ii) mentoring and active recruitment. We will support scientists during pregnancy and scientists (female and male) with young children through the following key measures and gender equality funds:

a) Provision of a part-time position for those who cannot work continuously full-time due to time-consuming family duties. These scientists will be supported by allocation of a technician or another part-time PostDoc position, usually a part-time position for a certain period.

b) Similar assistance by a technician as in a) will be provided to facilitate the re-entry of principal investigators and young scientists after parental leave (if support by re-entry programs on-site is not available).

c) Flexible baby-sitter services (e.g. in case of illness of kids, execution of experiments when daycare facility is already closed) and childcare during all CRC/TR events (both services are meant as add-on if support by local programs is not sufficient).

d) Implementation of temporary home office time (e.g. during thesis/publication/grant writing) to self-organize and coordinate scientific and family work.

Regarding mentoring and recruitment, we will support young female scientists through the following main measures:

e) Encouragement and support to participate in existing mentoring programs, skill courses and career seminars on-site; costs will be reimbursed if not financed by local programs.

f) Active recruitment of excellent female scientists (MD or PhD, e.g. after PostDoc period abroad), who perform GvL/GvHD research and try to set up their own group at a CRC/TR site. Candidates will receive local financial support within the PostDocTOP program including own position, technician assistance and consumables (detailed above). With this support, the integration into the CRC/TR shall be facilitated as well as the application for external research grants (depending on the individual phase of the scientist´s career, e.g. first DFG proposal, Emmy-Noether or Heisenberg program of DFG, Max-Eder program of German Cancer Aid).

For further questions please contact the Spokesperson of CRC TR 221, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Herr (wolfgang.herr@ukr.de), or the Lead Coordinator for Gender Equality, Prof. Dr. Simone Thomas (simone.thomas@ukr.de).