Early-on discovery and support for young research talents

Friedrich Schiller University Jena has launched the "Honours Programme for future researchers". Within this programme, students who are fascinated by academic research and want to pursue an academic career in the future will be supported individually and get the chance to participate in academic research during their studies.

In the first phase 24 students will be supported. "We started a pilot phase of the programme this year", says the Vice-President for young researchers and diversity management, Prof. Dr. Uwe Cantner. "Starting from next year, up to 80 new students can be supported each year."

Being supervised and advised by experienced researchers, the selected students can develop their own research projects. For these projects, the students can apply for material costs of up to €1,000 per year, covering for example, travel expenses when taking part in congresses. In addition to that, the Graduate Academy will offer several workshops to the selected students to train research related skills like focusing research questions or writing scientiffic texts.

"With this programme, we want to professsionalize one of the key competencies of universities - the discovery of new talents," explains Prof. Cantner the motivation to start the programme. Funding research oriented students in this way, is a new and unique approach in Germany. The programme is one of the essential parts of the "LIGHT, LIFE, LIBERTY - Connecting Visions" strategy of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. It is funded for six years by the university allowance provided by the Excellence Strategy of the German government and the Länder.