Current News

The Zukunftskolleg is warmly welcoming Senior Fellow Adelheid Godt from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Bielefeld. She has been nominated by Malte Drescher, Daniel Summerer, Dominik Wöll and Filip Wojciechowski and will be our guest for two months. Prof. Godt is an organic chemist working in the field of synthesis of molecular rulers for spectroscopy. Her work contributes directly to research projects of all four nominating Fellows.

Congratulations to Ulrich Sieberer! He passed his habilitation and received the venia legendi in Political Science at the University of Konstanz. Title of his habilitation thesis: “MPs, Parties and Institutions. Rational Choice Institutionalist Studies of Parliamentary Behavior in European Democracies”.

The Zukunftskolleg is warmly welcoming Nora Strejilevich from the Department of Literature at the San Diego State University, California. In the last call for the Mentorship Programme she has been nominated by Liliana Ruth Feierstein, Postdoc in the research group of Zukunftskolleg Alumna Kirsten Mahlke, who works on the project “Narratives of Terror and Disappeareance. Fantastic Dimensions of Argentina’s Collective Memory since the Military Dictatorship”. Nora Strejilevich is professor, writer…

The Zukunftskolleg is warmly welcoming Anne Imberty from the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in Grenoble, France. She has been nominated by Alexander Titz within the scope of the Zukunftskolleg Mentorship Programme and will be in Konstanz from June 9 to 12, 2013. Anne Imberty is a chemist by training and received her PhD in chemistry from the University of Grenoble. After a postdoctoral stay in Toronto, she moved to Nantes (INRA and CNRS) and then to Grenoble, where she is…

„Forschen und Bangen“ („Research and tremble“) is the title of a radio report on SWR2 Wissen that analyses the situation of young researchers in Germany. To show good examples for supporting up-and-coming scientists journalist Beate Krol has visited the University of Konstanz and the Zukunftskolleg and interviewed Anda Lohan and Agata Nörenberg. The whole report you can download here: http://www.swr.de/swr2/programm/sendungen/wissen/archiv/-/id=660334/w9hse1/index.html

We welcome Aline Steinbrecher (History) and Magdalena Balcerak Jackson (Philosophy) at the Zukunftskolleg. Aline Steinbrecher is one of a total of 16 2-year Postdoctoral Fellows and Magdalena Balcerak-Jackson one of a total of eight 5-year Research Fellows that were selected in the last call for applications. Both started their Fellowship in June.

Associated Fellow Aswin Mangerich from the department of Biology, who recently won a Mentorship of the Zukunftskolleg, developed – in cooperation with colleagues from the University of Konstanz and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, USA – a new method that allows to quantify poly(ADP-ribose) in cells. This can help to develop new chemotherapeutics.
Aswin Mangerich´s future mentor, Peter C. Dedon from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was also involved in the…

After having finished his PhD, former Associated Fellow Junaid Jameel Ahmad from the department of Computer and Information Sciences, has now moved to Switzerland and started his Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, commonly known as École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). During his PhD studies, he was supervised by former Fellow Shujun Li, and received two Fellowships from the Zukunftskolleg: A one-year Fellowship in 2009/2010 to work as a student…

In its last meeting on May 6 the Executive Committee decided about the winners of the Mentorship programme (application deadline was on April 30). We congratulate Liliana Ruth Feierstein (Literature) who will be mentored by Nora Strejilevich from the San Diego State University, Lorna Gregory (Mathematics and Statistics) who will be mentored by Francoise Delon from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, Aswin Mangerich (Biology) who will be mentored by Peter C. Dedon from the…

Another Senior Fellow arrived at the Zukunftskolleg: We are warmly welcoming Sandeep Verma from the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. He has been nominated by Daniel Summerer and will be our guest until July 15, 2013. A main part of Sandeep Verma´s research deals with the use of nucleobases, nucleotides, as well as oligonucleotides which provides a direct link to Daniel Summerer´s research programme. For Sandeep Verma it´s already his second stay at the…

The Zukunftskolleg is warmly welcoming Senior Fellow Viktor V. Kabanov from the Department of Complex Matter at the Jozef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He has been nominated by Jure Demsar. After his last stay in Konstanz in autumn 2012, this time the Senior Fellow will be our guest until June 11, 2013. The theoretical physicist is an expert in superconductivity and ultrafast phenomena in complex solids. During his stay he will join forces with experimental colleagues at the…

We congratulate Zukunftskolleg Alumnus Wolfgang Freitag who has been offered a professorship in “Epistemology and Theory of Science” at the University College Freiburg. Wolfgang Freitag was a Fellow from December 2006 until January 2012. We wish him all the best!

The Zukunftskolleg congratulates Helen Gunter who was appointed as teaching deputy in the department of Biology at the University of Konstanz. In summer term 2013 and winter term 2013/14 she will substitute for Prof. Ph.D Axel Meyer from the chair of Zoology and Evolutionary Biology in teaching.

During the Jour Fixe on April 25 the assembly of members elected Margaret Thomas as a new member for the Executive Committee. She replaces Dominik Wöll. We congratulate Margaret Thomas and thank Dominik Wöll very much for his work in the Executive Committee.

On April 18 and 19 the new members of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Zukunftskolleg held their first meeting in Konstanz. The first day started in the evening with a guided tour by historian Harald Derschka through the historic premises of the Steigenberger Inselhotel, a former cloister. On Friday morning the rector of the University of Konstanz, Ulrich Rüdiger, opened the meeting in the Senatssaal and welcomed the new board members as well as the director and the Fellows of the…

Associated Fellow Roland Weierstall was involved in a study that analysed the attractiveness of veterans. For this he and his colleagues interviewed more than 1.000 women, which type of man - out of four different types with and without posttraumatic stress disorder and aggression - they would prefer for a long-term or short-term relationship.

The study was published in the journal “Evolutionary Psychology”. Read more about it in the press release (in German).

On April 15, the Recruitment Committee held its first meeting to select new Fellows for the Zukunftskolleg. In its most recent call for proposals (closing date for applications was March 15, 2013), the Zukunftskolleg received more than 180 applications for the 2-year Postdoctoral and 5-year Research Fellowships, as part of the Marie Curie Zukunftskolleg Incoming Fellowship Programme (ZIF) supported by the European Union COFUND Programme. The Recruitment Committee chose 35 finalists for the…

We welcome Martin Elff (Politics and Public Administration), Philip Leifeld (Politics and Public Administration), Elena Rosseeva (Chemistry) and Filip Wojciechowski (Chemistry) at the Zukunftskolleg. Elena Rosseeva is one of the new 5-year Research Fellows, the three men are new 2-year Postdoctoral Fellows. All were selected in the last call for applications and started their Fellowship in April.

Spiegel Online published an interview with Giovanni Galizia entitled “Die Trägheit der Veränderung” („Inertia of Change“). He talked about the perspectives of young researchers at German universities, the attractiveness of the Zukunftskolleg and the tenure track model.

The original interview was conducted and published by the university magazine „duz“ in March:

http://www.duz.de/duz-magazin/2013/04/das-prekariat-ist-hier-gesichert/166

We welcome Daniele Brida (Physics), Torsten Pietsch (Physics) and Nils Weidmann (Politics) at the Zukunftskolleg. As the first of a total of eight 5-year Research Fellows that were selected in the last call for applications, they started their Fellowship. All three newcomers are not totally new at the University of Konstanz: Torsten Pietsch has been a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physics since September 2009. Daniele Prida has been working as group leader in the Department of Physics…

We congratulate Philip Leifeld who won the Südwestmetall prize 2013. Philip Leifeld is one of our new 2-year Postdoctoral Fellows. He starts working at the Zukunftskolleg in April. With the Südwestmetall prize the Baden-Württemberg Employers’ Association of the Metal and Electrical Industry honors outstanding young researchers of the state´s universities. The awarding will take place on April 25 in Fribourg.

We welcome Tamir Hassan (Computer and Information Science), Gianluca Rastelli (Physics) and Julia Boll (Literature) at the Zukunftskolleg. As the next of a total of 16 2-year Postdoctoral Fellows that were selected in the last call for applications, they started their Fellowship in March. 10 further new Postdoctoral Fellows will come in the course of the next months.

The Zukunftskolleg welcomes new Associated Fellows: Stephan Hacker (Chemistry) and Johanna Kastl (Biology) are members of the Graduate School “Chemical Biology”; Tahmina Sadat Hadjer (Politics and Public Administration), Karsten Wasiluk (Economics) and Katarina Zigova (Economics) are members of the Graduate School “Decision Sciences”. They received a Doctoral Fellowship from the Zukunftskolleg to finance the last year of their dissertation.

Attila Tanyi´s temporary professorship at the University of Bayreuth was prolonged for six months. He will hold his position in the “Philosophy and Economics program” also in the summer term 2013.

Thomas Voigtmann is one of this year´s 142 Outstanding Referees nominated by the American Physical Society (APS). The editors of the APS journals have selected them out of more than 60.000 currently active referees. Initiated in 2008, the Outstanding Referee program recognizes scientists who have been exceptionally helpful in assessing manuscripts for publication in the APS journals. Selections are based on two decades of records on the number, quality, and timeliness of referee reports. The…

We congratulate Zukunftskolleg Alumnus Rudolf Bratschitsch who accepted a professorship at the Physical Institute at the University of Muenster. Rudolf Bratschitsch was a Fellow from December 2007 until October 2010 as well as a member of the Board of Directors from October 2008 until September 2009. We wish him all the best!

From February 21 until March 8, 2013, erg’s gallery in Brussels shows a solo exhibition of Senior Fellow Alexander Schellow, which is dedicated to the city of Tirana. Based on the artist´s practice to reconstruct experiences through drawings from memory, the installation features drawings, animation films, texts and other materials related to the Albanian city, and testifies the work in progress that the former Artist in Residence is devoting to it.

More information about the exhibition: http:/…

Ulrich Sieberer has been offered a Substitute Professorship in “Comparative Politics” at the University of Konstanz in summer term 2013. He will substitute for Prof. Dr. Christian Breunig who holds the chair since August 2012. The Zukunftskolleg congratulates Ulrich Sieberer and wishes him all the best.

What happened in 2012 at the Zukunftskolleg? Which Fellows were successful and which Senior Fellows visited us? − Answers to these and much more questions you will find in the Annual Report 2012 of the Zukunftskolleg that was published now and will be distributed by mail. You can also download it here: http://www.zukunftskolleg.uni-konstanz.de/downloads/