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Events
- The Postdoc Days at the University of Jena
will take place from June 18 to 20. This year's
topic will be "Transfer.Leadership.Networking". The
Postdoc Days offer a variety of short events on
important and interesting topics related to everyday
life as a postdoc and your academic career. You will
find further information on our website soon.
- On 8 April, the University of Jena organises a digital
lunch talk on the Excellence Strategy.
In it, the significance of the Excellence Strategy
for the University of Jena will be explained and the
two Jena Clusters of Excellence will be presented:
the Cluster "Balance of the Microverse", which was
already funded in the previous funding period, and
the newly proposed Cluster "Imaginamics". Access to
the event
is restricted to members of the University.
- A discussion event entitled "BetterScience"
will take place on 24 April in the auditorium "Zur
Rosen". It will focus on the working conditions at
the University of Jena and to what extent they
enable excellence. The "Better Science" initiative
was launched at the University
of Bern. It wants to draw attention to the
problems of an accelerated academic system and
encourage an alternative discourse on excellence in
higher education. The discussion will be in German.
- Since the end of March, the Berlin Social Science
Center is organising a regular
lunch lecture on "The academic labour
market". Experts will shed light on various
aspects of the academic system, e.g. hierarchy and
power abuse or the transformation of the academic
labour market. The events are in German. They will
be published as podcasts afterwards.
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Get
involved
- A Makeathon
will take place at StadtLab Jena on 6 and 7 May. In
this innovative format, interdisciplinary teams
will develop creative solutions within 24
hours to previously submitted questions, e.g. on
topics like inclusion or city development.
Currently, participants are still being
sought for the teams.
- Being the first person in your family who has done
a doctorate often involves particular hurdles.
The Arbeiterkind.de initiative supports
students and doctoral researchers on this path. On
27 April, the Thuringian regional group is
organising a (German) information
workshop in Erfurt to explain how you can get
involved in the association as a volunteer and
encourage others with your own story.
- The "Thuringian
University Initiative for AI in Higher Education"
was launched at the beginning of this year. As part
of the project, comprehensive teaching offers are to
be developed and knowledge is to be provided in the
field of artificial intelligence in various subject
areas. A (German) survey on possible AI certificates
and topics for AI courses has now been launched in
order to determine the need for further
qualifications. Participation is possible
until the middle of April.
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Announcements
- Wanted: the FAIRest
data set in Thuringia! The FAIR
principle means:
The data set should be findable, accessible,
interoperable and reusable. The prize money is up to
2,000 euros. Application deadline is 15 April.
- Female postdocs, junior research group leaders or
junior professors can now apply for the mentoring
programme for female postdocs at the
universities of Halle, Jena and Leipzig. You can
expect individual mentoring by experienced
professors from the three universities as well as
training offers on career-relevant transferable
skills. Application deadline is 14 April.
- The University’s focal research area LIBERTY
announces the Liberty
“Connect” fund. It enables the
development of scientific projects that will build
the basis for a larger research grant application
for third-party funding. It is possible to receive
funding of up to 20.000€ for personnel or
non-personnel costs. Application deadline is 15 May.
- The German Scholars Organisation invites
applications for its "Leadership
Academy". The funding programme aims to
support German-speaking postdocs from all
disciplines who are currently conducting research
abroad or have been living in Germany (again) for a
maximum of one year. The aim of the training
programme is to strengthen leadership skills.
Application deadline is 23 April.
- Unesco and L'Oreal are awarding four
prizes for outstanding female natural scientists.
The prizes are endowed with 25,000 euros each. An
employment contract with a university is a
prerequisite for application. The closing date for
applications is 30 April.
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Qualification
offers
There are still vacancies in the following online and
on-site workshops:
- Graduate Academy:
- Lehre Lernen:
- Service Centre for Research and Transfer:
- Competence Center Digital Research (zedif):
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This
may be of interest to you
- The
tenure-track professorship is the subject of
a dispute in Potsdam: Junior professor
Johannes Ungelenk had received positive interim and
final evaluations. Nevertheless, the central (and
non-subject-related) tenure-track commission headed
by the President decided
that Ungelenk should not be awarded a tenured
professorship. This decision was sharply criticised
by the subject-specific evaluation committee: "The
question arises why external academics should make
the effort to write detailed, differentiated reports
(...) if our professional assessment is simply
ignored in the end". According to this report, the
non-specialist commission did not give any objective
reasons. It is possible that the decision was also
made in order to allow the university to announce
the professorship again as a (cheaper) tenure-track
professorship. However, Ungelenk took legal action
against the decision and has
now been successful in a fast-track decision
before the Potsdam Administrative Court. The
university can appeal the judgement.
- The
FDP-led Ministry of Education and Research is submitting
a reform proposal for the Academic Employment
Law to the Bundestag: The idea is to allow
postdocs to be employed for a fixed term of four
years after completing their doctorate. For a
contract extension of a further two years, the
research institution must provide a follow-up
commitment for employment after this period.
Unfortunately, the other two coalition parties
reject this regulation. That a change is slowly
becoming necessary is shown by a new
study: the lack of career prospects in
particular remains the central issue for academics
in Germany. For the first time, the professorship is
no longer the primary career goal for postdocs – but
rather other positions in research and teaching. The
state of Hesse is already heading
in this direction: in the collective wage
agreement, a significant increase in permanent
positions besides professorships was agreed
for the coming years. Is this the first sign of a
trend away from restricting the time for fixed-term
contracts towards the introduction of quotas for
permanent positions?
- For years, there were "citation cartels" in
mathematics:
Groups of mathematicians cited each other in
low-quality articles, which in turn were published
in unknown journals. As a result, mathematical
institutes from China, Saudi Arabia and Egypt ended
up at the top of international rankings – even ahead
of renowned institutes such as Stanford or
Princeton. Due to these irregularities, the entire
discipline of mathematics was
excluded from the latest Clarivate citation
ranking.
- The Max Planck Institute in Halle has sacked
the Lebanese-Australian visiting professor Ghassan
Hage. This followed criticism in the media regarding
his radical statements about Israel on X.
The Max Planck Society stated
that the comments violated its fundamental values.
The decision led to international criticism.
Hage intends to take legal action against it.
In order to better support its academics in dealing
with controversial topics in the public sphere,
Humboldt-Universität Berlin has published a comprehensive
guide with possible case constellations
and practical recommendations for action. The
University of Jena also has its own social
media guidelines, which are a little less
detailed but still answer all questions about
starting and maintaining a social media account.
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News
from University of Jena
- The University of Jena has
been led on an interim basis since the previous President,
Prof Dr Walter Rosenthal, left. Now, a commission
has found a candidate to succeed him: Prof
Dr Andreas Marx. He is currently Professor
of Organic Chemistry at the University of
Konstanz. On 9 April at 4 pm, he will introduce
himself to the university's internal public in the
main auditorium of the university building.
Following this, the university
assembly will elect him as president.
- In Jena, there
are many research institutes and thus a widely
spread research infrastructure. The JenaVersum
association has now begun to bring together information
about the existing large-scale scientific
equipment using the open
source platform OpenIris. As a result, it is
now possible to get an overview of the available
equipment and its utilisation capacities. Over 90
devices have been registered so far. The platform
can be used by all researchers at the University of
Jena and non-university research institutions.
- In the Thuringian
University and State Library (ThuLB), 15 books had
to be sorted out due to an arsenic contamination.
Recent scientific findings had
revealed that some book spines were coloured
with arsenic in the 19th century to protect them
from vermin. The intensely bright "Schweinfurt
green" colour is said to be particularly poisonous
(see picture above). Toxicity can occur when fingers
are moistened to turn pages or the dust is inhaled.
That’s why in the last two months, older books have
been put on hold in many German libraries. The
ThuLB owns
460,000 books from this era: Before these books are
handed out, they are now checked for possible
contamination.
- The Chair of
Clinical Psychology regularly produces the German
podcast "Kopfkompass". It explores the
world of psychotherapy and mental disorders, for
example how obsessive-compulsive disorder and
depression may arise. 12 episodes have already been
recorded.
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Latest
news from Jena city
- The citizens' service of the city of Jena
has been relocated.
It can now be found at Engelplatz 1 in the newly
constructed building of the city library.
- The city of Jena has launched
a new campaign against everyday racism.
Under the hashtag #JenaSchauHin, specific incidents
of racism in Jena are made visible. The campaign is
intended to help recognise and name racism and fight
back against it.
- The central campus of the University of Jena,
Ernst-Abbe-Platz, is to be redesigned.
The city is receiving 6.3 million euros for this as
part of the federal programme "Adapting urban spaces
to climate change". The square should have more
plants and more (real) seating. The university's
Green Office has already conducted a survey on the
redesign among university members. The city of Jena
is also organising a discussion
event on the redesign on 12 April.
- The election for Jena's Lord Mayor will
take place on 26 May. The period of office is six
years. If no candidate receives an absolute
majority, a run-off election will be held on 9 June
between the top two candidates. A (German) overview
of the candidates can be found here.
- Finally, the city of Jena has its own Playmobil
figure: Carl Zeiss with a hat and a microscope
(Picture above: JenaKultur)! 25,000 pieces were
initially produced.
The first batch of 500 is already sold out. Further
copies can be purchased in the FC Carl Zeiss Jena
fan shop starting on 5 April. The Playmobil Carl
Zeiss joins the (so far all-male) Thuringian
Playmobil family: Friedrich Schiller, Johann
Sebastian Bach, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and
Martin Luther. It might be time for a Thuringian
woman! How about Anna Amalia, Rowena Morse, Caroline
Schlegel, Elisabeth of Thuringia or Sandra Hüller?
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