The people over at GAIN headquarters asked me if I could write a short piece about the conference for their newsletter. Even though I have been swamped with work (perfect proof being the lack of updates around here), I could not say no to them. If you have read my previous posts on the conference you’ll be aware of how much I enjoyed it and especially how much I appreciate the work of the organizers. However, writing such a special post for the GAIN newsletter proved difficult. It was a different beast and, as you know, I am barely capable of writing a blog post. Anyway, I also include that 500-800 words piece here; a bit milder thanks to their editing (and finally a reason to choose a creative commons license for my stuff; watch out for updates in that respect).

I was looking for a catchy first line, you know, that perfect line that captures the whole piece? Something with ‘Cambridge’, ‘GAIN conference’, preferably ‘September morning’ and maybe even ‘pondering’ and ‘merrily’ in it. Well, that experiment failed and I only have 800 words, so let’s just jump right in (remind you of anything, dear postdoc?). Just to get it out of the way, the conference was excellent. The participating audience was amazing, the schedule was well balanced and the organization appeared flawless. However, it was a conference for Germans and Germans always complain, right? Take me for example. As a mathematician I clearly belonged to the exotic researchers at a conference which, by the looks of it, focused on the life sciences (hardly surprising since 40% of all grant money goes that way). So could I really expect anything? Well, I certainly gained a lot.

The Good

The first key was the smooth run right down to the details (like catering, the design of the career fair etc.). It created a relaxed and productive atmosphere which turned an audience into participants. This worked extremely well with the balanced mix of sessions, certainly at its best in the Q&A breakout sessions. No lengthy, prepared statements, just jumping right in — and an audience that was not taken aback but ready to debate. It was, simply put, exciting to be at those sessions.

The lecture-like sessions were fortunately both of high quality and actual interest. For example, you got a solid introduction to the complicated grant structures for the next step as well as the academic system in general — and some of them even tried to ‘just’ extend everybody’s horizon. But the very best thing was that I met a lot of interesting people, so interesting in fact, I do not remember a single boring conversation.

the Bad,

Now that we have the good stuff out of the way, let’s do some German complaining. Even though the breakout sessions with their panels were very good, this sometimes seemed to be despite the panelists not because of them. Even though it was flattering that all the big research organizations sent their presidents who participated in workshops, panels, and were approachable during coffee breaks and socials, they sometimes fell back on evasive ‘politician speak’ during the q&a sessions. In stark contrast to this was the very best session of the conference, the session on “Nachwuchsgruppen” (the unfortunate term). That session was the perfect combination of what made the conference so enjoyable; excellent information on the grant system and peers that have taken the next step but could still relate to their audience. These PIs were open to questions, did not mind thinking on their feet, did not even mind to stand corrected (how shocking!) after arguments were debated; in short, their invaluable insight gave the participants what they were looking for both intellectually and emotionally. If I had one wish, I’d suggest that there should be more sessions like that one.

and the Ugly

There was nothing ugly, of course. But there were some little disappointments, like old-fashioned responses to gender and childcare questions or the lack of foreign researchers from within the German system (only the brilliant lecture by Philip Altbach offered an outsider’s view but stayed outside). Above all, I missed a European perspective. The fact that German funding agencies are restricted to Germany cannot explain the profound lack of a European perspective. This could have been given by the federal politicians (who often seemed in the wrong place) or by German researchers in the EU. With all the talk about brain drain, gain and circulation the one advantage the North-American market will always have over Germany is its size. ‘Getting them home’ should mean Europe, not just Germany. Finally, the recent positive developments in academic funding were excessively stressed by some panelists, once even to deny a discussion of persisting issues. Maybe this short period of improvement solved all problems but it might have been worthwhile to discuss why people nevertheless left Germany.

Coda

Juergen Mlynek’s remark during the ‘presidential’ panel was spot on: the biggest problem might be psychological. There are many opportunities to continue a career in or close to academia, more than there ever were, both in number and variety. But reliable information about the actual experience needs to get out there. This sharing of information and personal experience is the main achievement of the conference (with much more beyond that). I’m looking forward to a chance to go again next year.

Well, this has been going on for too long… This final post should have concluded the mini-series weeks ago. Instead, it has prevented me from writing about anything else. So let me conclude with some late notes and my answers to the feedback questionaire. I will not go back to the individual posts to refresh my memory, instead, I will write simply what I remember now which is probably more important since it will dominate my long time memory of the whole event (but I will use my notes for this post which sort of developed while writing the rest).

pros and cons

Let’s just quickly go through the pros and cons of the whole shebang. First and foremost, the biggest pro was certainly my extremely low expectations. And in a way I am more neutral about the positive aspects of the conference now. After all, it did reinforce the feeling that my field (pure mathematics in general) is quite generally an exotic subject and hence in danger of falling of the funding wagon in the long run. Nevertheless, here is a list of neutral pros.

pros

• very good information on grant opportunities in Germany
  • This is especially true for but not restricted to post-post-doc funding, i.e., things that might get you on track for a permanent position. So if you want to get info on that, you should come to the conference next time!
• Meeting interesting people.
  • This is a soft factor, but one to reckon with. These truly are your peers — and it’s very easy to strike up a conversation. This made the atmosphere (for me) much more relaxed and opened up more aspects that I would have missed on my own. Talk about networking…
• Light at the end of short-term contract tunnel
  • It seems that finally the many, many calls are being heard. Many small signs showed that long-term, non-tenure positions might be possible in the future. That would be incredibly appealing to almost anyone I talked to. As was said, it’s all all about psychology. Permanent positions will lower the all-or-nothing pressure which will never lead to less dynamical researchers, but to more productive work environments.

Let’s hit the cons. I admit I am probably overly critical, but hey, it’s my post. Go and comment if you disagree!

cons

• social networks, social media, internet based cooperations FAIL
  • For a networking conference the lack of considerations of internet based networking was pretty shocking. Every (young) researchers knows that digital communication is the key for a productive future. The total lack of talking about this did not mean that this is a triviality and does not need to be repeated. It unfortunately meant that the funding organisations are still in tight control of non-digital natives who don’t understand what potential is already there and how much more is yet to be achieved through online collaborations. Of course, the funding landscape does not accommodate such collaborations for the very same reason, so there was no need for this if you focus on available tools. But the vision was clearly lacking.
• Deutsch, Deutsch, Deutsch
  • The whole conference was too German-centric. I grew up in Schengen-country, I don’t know borders in Europe. Europe is my home, Germany my local variant to Europe. Of course, I’m exaggerating. Nevertheless, the funding agencies need to think European. And we’re not doing that. The shameful number is (I believe but find no links) 8% non-German professors which (I believe) gets cut to 3% if you exclude Austrian and Swiss professors. All the talk about brain drain vs brain gain vs brain circulation. What’s the point if this is only focused on German researchers? The one thing that makes the American system fascinating is its openness towards foreigners. And if the German system cannot even open up to the rest of Europe than it’s never going to become as interesting a system. Similarly, if you want those well-educated people back from North-America then you should be happy if you can get them back to the EU. Obviously, that might not be possible with your money (although, why not for neighboring countries?), but this kind of conference needs to get a European equivalent. Maybe there we could at least get the information that is already available (cf. the post on the field-specific breakout session).
• Federal politicians can do more
  • As mentioned in the posts, the federal politicians felt that they were the wrong people to talk to since universities are outside federal control. That might be, but funding is not. And most definitely European initiatives are not. Also, remember the talk about the American system? That it’s bad for American researchers to spend time outside of the US-system? Hello federal politicians? International relations are your thing, are they not? Get in there, turn the tables, get the smartest American researchers to Europe and Germany, try initiatives that break up this crust! Really, if politicians think there’s nothing that needs to be done on an international level, we probably shouldn’t vote for them next time.
• State politicians were missing
  • Nuff said. But don’t just replace federal with state. We need both.
• More women, more foreigners
  • Yes, there were plenty of women. But not only the reactions to gender related questions were alarmingly old-fashioned. And there were hardly any foreigners that have positions in Germany and could open up the conversation, could give a different perspective. A good example was the Nachwuchsgruppen-breakout — one foreigner and one woman, combined in one person. Sad.

So let’s turn to things that were good, but

not good enough

• More ‘next gen’ peers
  • The best session was the session on Nachwuchsgruppen. It was the only session designed to interact with the people that have taken the next step. This should have been a much bigger part of the conference. Even though it’s nice to hear about tenure-track and similar things (and it’s important, I know) those are in the far future. The next step needs to be the focus. And it needs to include those that have failed, too!
• Bosses, open up!
  • The big heads need to open up. They should come to listen, not just talk. Yes, most post-docs don’t know much about funding opportunities or politics, they don’t know how much has been accomplished or how bad it used to be. But really, it’s still pretty bad after decades of cuts. So listen to the worries, listen to what we see that is important, what is good, what is bad (here and there). Give us your perspective, but please don’t ignore any question that you don’t understand, especially when it’s repeated again and again. It might be worth to find out what’s behind it even if you think it’s bogus — hell, especially, if you think it’s bogus!

So that’s it. Enough now.

Auszug aus Feedback-Umfrage

Let me, to finally finish this series, disclose my answers to the feedback questionaire — albeit in German.

• Veranstaltung
  • Plus:
    • Die direkten Erfahrungen der Teilnehmer und vor allem der Wissenschaftler ‘danach’, d.h. die Wissenschaftler, die den naechsten Schritt auf der Karriereleiter getan haben (eine eigenstaendige Gruppe fuehren). Einerseits, weil sie “Vorbilder” sind, andererseits weil die Gespraeche am ergiebigsten waren, da diese Vorbilder am naechsten dran sind, an der Situation der PostDocs.
  • Minus:
    • Die hochkaraetigen Teilnehmer (all die Praesident_innen) waren haeufig zu professionell. D.h. wenn eine unbequeme oder unerwartete Frage kam, wurde politisch professionell ausgewichen (durch Floskeln, Themenwechsel etc.). Es waere wichtig, dass (insbesondere in den Gespraechsrunden) auch eine Atmosphaere des (durchaus kritischen) Zuhoerens von Seiten der Fuehrungspersoenlichkeiten herrschen wuerde.
    • Es fehlte durchweg die internationale Ausrichtung. D.h. einerseits herrschte eine Fixierung auf Deutschland, als ob Deutsche nur nach Deutschland wollten; stattdessen waere doch eine europaeische Perspektive viel wichtiger. Andererseits fehlten Nicht-Deutsche Kollegen; wenn schon brain circulation, dann sollte diese dringend auch Nicht-Deutsche einbeziehen. Siehe die Statistik der 9% nicht-deutscher Professoren in Deutschland, von denen weitere 5% aus der Schweiz und Oesterreich stammen.
• Talent Fair
  • Plus
    • Die Gespraeche mit BCG, GSO und dem Dual Career Office der TUM waren sehr interessant. Die drei hatten die einzigen Leute, die auch mit “Exoten” ein Gespraech fuehren koennen.
  • Minus
    • Als “Exot” (Reine Mathematik) war der Fair ziemlich irrelevant. Ausseruniversitaere Forschung faellt weg, die Hochschulen boten kaum passende Gespraechsmoeglichkeiten, da sie sich (verstaendlicherweise) auf den Mainstream der Forschung (sprich: life sciences) konzentrierten. Stattdessen konnte ich das traurige Spiel spielen “Googlen, wie viel Stellen meines Faches an ihrer Hochschule dennaechst wegfallen”.

• Tagungsmappe
  • Es braucht keine Tagungsmappe. Eine gute Website, eine paar Displays im Konferenzbereich mit interaktiver Funktion waere besser — dank all der Laptops und Smartphones braucht es nicht mehr.
• 1. Breakout
  • Gefallen hat sie mir, nicht wegen den “Rednern” (da wurde ich eher enttaeuscht), sondern wegen der guten und kritischen Fragen. Gut war, dass es direkt mit Fragen losging, ohne Statements etc.
    (siehe auch http://peter.krautzberger.info/2010/09/gain_conference_part1)
• 2. Breakout
  • Wiederum waren es die Teilnehmer, die das ganze interessant machten. Die Fragen wurden aber auch meist recht gut beantwortet, wobei Karin Zach deutlich sinnvollere Antworten gab. Wiederum Lob fuer das offene Konzept, kein Lob fuer ausweichende Antworten. (siehe auch http://peter.krautzberger.info/2010/09/gain_conference_part2/ )

• 3. Breakout
  • Siehe http://peter.krautzberger.info/2010/09/gain_conference_part3/
• 4. Breakout
  • Siehe http://peter.krautzberger.info/2010/09/gain_conference_part3/ Definitv das Highlight der Konferenz!
• 5. Breakout
  • Siehe http://peter.krautzberger.info/2010/09/gain_conference_part4

• Orga
  • Die Organisation war besonders gut. Der Tagungsort war sehr angenehm und machte es einfach, sich auf die Konferenz zu konzentrieren. Die Kaffeepausen in den Career Fair zu integrieren war perfekt. Die Organisation der Sessions war sehr gut. Mir ist nie etwas Organisatorisches negativ aufgefallen.

• Karriere
  • Einerseits, dass mein Exotenfach evtl. keine Zukunft hat. Andererseits, dass es einige wenige Alternativen im wissenschaftsnahen Bereich gibt, in denen ich evtl. meine Begeisterung an Wissenschaft an sich gut einbringen kann. Das war’s leider auch schon.

The last day of the conference was only half a day and the only one without pure Q&A sessions but more traditional panel discussions.

First session

The first session was another workshop with three parallel instances. I chose to go to the first (‘New oppucations for scientists’) although I later realized that I probably declared interest in the third one on co-operation and interdisciplinary reserach when I registered. Nevertheless, I think it was a very good choice.

As mentioned, this session was a classical discussion panel. The five participants (Susanne Dyrchs, Boston Consulting, Hellmut Meinhof, Bundesagentur, Heide Naderer, RWTH Aachen, Stefanie Seltmann, DKFZ, and Isolde von Bülow, LMU) started with short talks followed by some q&a. As a completely irrelevant remark, the only male participant actually apologized for getting up when it was not his turn. It struck me as odd; was he worried to be considered sexist (for ignoring the woman whose turn it was)? Since this did not happen at the beginning the thought never crossed my mind. Why would he have to apologize for an honest mistake? Weird.

Anyway, back to the talks. They were extremely interesting (except Hellmut Meinhof’s talk which was very vague compared to the others). Stefanie Seltmann hit it off with a brilliant first talk, starting from her own early career decisions to becoming the press officer of the DKFZ. She outlined what steps in her career seemed important and gave some advice for those considering similar careers. In a way, it was very interesting to hear about her unconventional career path. And yet I could not fully relate. She was, in a way, too far ahead in her career, where my questions lay in more immediate concerns (how do I get started etc). Again, this is was not an uncommon theme that the speakers were too advanced. One more nerdy thing: using a strip from smbc without crediting, not good…

Next came Heide Naderer, director of the international office at the RWTH. She highlighted the pros and cons of working in a German university’s administration. I enjoyed her balanced and realistic talk; it seems like administrations at German universities are finally waking up. If only they had some real power in a system where every committee by law has a majority of tenured professors. Nevertheless, she left me with the impression that this is actually an interesting job.

Isolde von Bülow left a similar impression as Heide Naderer. She is the head of the Graduate Center at the LMU and had a similarly straight career path as Heide Naderer, in her case this involved a lot of experience in administrating Graduiertenkollegs. I also had a good conversation with her at the career fair afterwards. She gave very open advice on how to get into her line of work. The only disappointment for me was that in my field most of her descriptions seemed not to fit. In pure mathematics there is not a lot of daily administration for even a large grant, no equipment to buy, no budget to keep an eye on daily. So as much as I enjoyed talking to her, it left me wondering if her proposed way into this line of work actually works outside experimentally rich research.

With Susanne Dyrch the first ‘outsider’ (truly outside academia) gave the fourth introduction. Her talk was just as lively my own conversation with her at the career fair the day before. She definitely got her own enthusiasm for the work at the Boston Consulting Group across. However, given the strong natural science bias of the participants (and given my own interests) I would have enjoyed the talk even more if she could have told us more about opportunities in science related projects the BCG has to offer (say technology or even academia related). I think this would be very attractive for researchers – if you leave your field your interest stay the same nevertheless, so anything science related would be more attractive. But still I liked her talk most because she was another example of ‘the next step’, this was still her first job after leaving academia which made her information more valuable.

Finally, Hellmut Meinhof gave a introduction jobs at international organisations (though he never said it I’m guessing as the representative for the German government) such as UN- and EU-organisations. His talk was a bit difficult to follow and the many restrictions did not make it look very appealing to me. But maybe I just didn’t get the point. My notes on it prominently mention that the salaries are tax free — go figure…

Strangely enough I have no notes about the questions from the audience. I know there were some (though only a few), but I can only vaguely remember one. I think somebody asked about the kind of contracts that the first three speaker had at their various career steps. They all had many short-term contracts and I think it was Stefanie Seltmann who even switched from a position for life to a short-term contract while changing jobs. In a way, however, I thought this was not the right questions. Short-term contracts have a different meaning outside of research. In research everybody is supposed to aim for tenure, if you have it, you made it, if you change jobs before that it is often considered a failure. Also, having different, slightly different occupations at different jobs is something positive, whereas in research this is very difficult and often dangerous – you might end up not producing results which will hurt you later no matter what experience you gained with new techniques you learned.

The final panel

After the coffee break and career fair the closing panel offered the politicians a chance to tell the participants their impression. So the panel consisted of the five members of the Bundestag, more precisely the committee for education and research, Thomas Feist, Anette Hübinger, Patrick Meinhardt, Martin Neumann and Krista Sager. Interestingly enough this was the first time (in ten years of GAIN conferences) that the committee had sent an official delegation – which will ensure that these impressions will find their way back to the committee and therefore maybe even to the more general public (or at least policy makers). But this is essentially where the good news ended. Mostly, the five were repeating that due to the federal structure they themselves, as members of the federal parliament, could not really influence the policies anymore and that the conference was missing representatives from the federal states. There was also a lot of banter about current political issues which did not touch the subject of the conference at all. In short, the panel’s debate suffered from the fact that I described before – the politicians were too professional. Nevertheless, they seemed to be taking with them one important impression: the assembled postdocs were in fact the right people to ask if one tries to find out what the problem and the lack of appeal of the German academic system is. The following questions were a bit weird. Not only were they cut short for no apparent reason other than the official time limit. But they started out with some weird old professor who just happened to be in town, had not attended the conference but went on some fundamental rant on the more basic funding problems of universities in Germany. Not that he was not right, but not only in retrospect did he waste everybody’s time. This topic, ongoing cuts on the state level, had been discussed numerous times in many sessions. That he seemed to not even consider that this topic had been discussed made his rant all the more distracting. Another question was about daycare – the situation is still abysmal, there is essentially no sensible affordable daycare in West Germany (and of course almost all of the best universities and research center are in the south and west where the federal states are simply richer). Another one was aimed at the problem that short-term positions with independent grant money do not lead to more researchers or lecturers but are countered by the state cutting regular positions – this was an easy deflection for the (federal) politicians. The only upside was that Krista Sager had another chance to re-enforce my impression of her being the most capable (or simply most experienced?) politician at the conference – she simply said that the situation is everybody’s fault and that the key is to end the blame game and start cooperating for real change. For comparison, Patrick Meinhardt at some point answered (I think it was a question on gender politics) that most problems were simply a generational problem, that the next generation will automatically fix. Wishful thinking if there ever was… So in a way, this was a disappointing end of the conference, but hey, somebody has to be the bottom feeder…

Well, my final thoughts on the conference will have to wait.

The second day at the GAIN conference was obviously the most intense day simply because it was the only full day. However, the program was well designed which minimised stress and maximised my attention span.

First session

The first session consisted of three parallel workshops. Since some were repeated in the afternoon it was not too hard to decide on two out of three five. In the morning I arrived a little late (thanks to a flate bike tire) at the workshop on “Alternative ways for a successful re-entrance in the German research system”. The session consisted of five short talks and questions. The talks were excellent. The DAAD, DFG and MPG talks were really informative showing all the tools and grants available. Even more interesting were the two other talks. The Potsdam university’s vice-president talked about their strategy for postdocs. He made quite an impression with honest answers and good comparative data. The fact that the university has a specific guide for postdocs was actually impressive (though this is kind of a sad thing to say). His talk was also interesting because some of his comments on the lack of long-term positions got a strong reaction from Krista Sager, MdB. Although the ‘politicality’ of their argument was a bit annoying, the facts were interesting. Apparently, there is a slight chance that finally we could have open ended contracts that can be terminated for economic reasons. This is something that is amazingly complicated in Germany. Since almost all universities are public institutions, their employees have very strong unions and therefore extemely good contracts (also, professor are always Beamte ) and every open-ended position is essentially tenure.

This is a problem for two reasons. One, universities are unwilling to give open-ended contracts since they cannot get rid of people if money is tight later. Two, researchers have either too much security or none at all. I did mention the interesting comments by Helmut Schwarz years ago at a Bundestag committee meeting. One thing he said there was that he does not understand, why German universities do not offer jobs via the overhead they acquire from the funding agencies. After all, the total overhead for the university fluctuates much less than on a departmental or personal level. So this extra money should give us extra positions (and investments). He argued that these could easily be open-ended since universities have enough experience to judge how the overhead will develop over the years. If its researchers acquire less and less grants (and hence overhead) then it should be possible to let people go for economic reasons ( leo tells me the correct term is “redundancy due to business operations”).

Generally speaking, I don’t understand why everybody the majority in the academic system should get tenure. If the price for tenure is as in Germany – ca. 10% (the professors) have an immense security whereas 50% are researchers with short-term contracts – then it’s not worth it. But open-ended contracts are necessary to give especially young researchers a greater security – just like everywhere else. My impression of my peers at the conference was: we’re not afraid of the competition but short-term contracts discourage immensely. Also, we don’t intend to get stuck on a low-level open-ended position. We want career options because we are ready to make a career.

Anyway, the last talk was by Kerstin Dübner-Gee of the dual career office at the TUM. I had already talked to her at the career fair the day before and her talk included a lot of interesting facts. I really hope more universities will introduce such tools. I think this will easily be the ‘killer application’/service to attract young researchers. Just connecting the partners, arranging informal (job) interviews and supporting the process as a whole; that’s very attractive for a lot of people I know.

talk talk talk

After the obligatory coffee break and another opportunity to stroll through the career fair it was time for talks. The first talk by Anke Burkhardt offered insight into (her) research in the development of academia in Germany. The talk gave a very good overview of the general structure of the system, the amount of money, how few tenured positions we have (as mentioned), the difficult legal situation since the most recent reform has had the federal administration give up almost all ways to do anything about the development of the academic system. Interesting as it was, I would have preferred a shorter talk on the issue. After all, postdocs are a long way from influencing policies, we’d rather hope for more information on how to get to a stable position where we can even think about that. Nevertheless, the talk was very good, albeit (again) Germany-centric. And a very frustrating note: almost all new tools in the system (tenure-track, negotiable salary, lecturer positions) are only ever optional, i.e., those federal states that have made them possible in their system made sure not to require them but only ‘allow’ them. And the (aging?) professorate controlling the universities seems quite unwilling to actually introduce them.

After lunch, it was time for the second talk of the day. Philip Altbach of Boston College gave the only English talk of the conference. His was an amazing talk. A gifted (and I assume well trained) speaker he gave an introduction into the American system as whole. I learned a lot, finally understanding a little how community colleges, public and private universities interact in the States. To pick out one particular topic, I think I was most surprised by his answer to the question why American students/researchers do not often consider going abroad. In his humble opinion the reason for this is that the American market mostly discourages this. That is, except for the top universities an institution will usually fail to acknowledge the quality of such an experience, both personally as well as academically. It really just makes your chances worse; poor Americans, I thought.

The last ‘talk’ wasn’t so much a talk as a panel. Marion Schmidt of the FTD moderated a discussion between the presidents of DFG, DAAD, Helmholtz Society, Humboldt Foundation and Hochschulrektorenkonferenz as well as Thomas Rachel (Ministry of education and research) and Andreas Busch (head of Bayer Schering research). It was probably the most uninteresting part of the conference. On second thought, due to the high quality of the rest this wouldn’t say much, but this was actually a little uninteresting. The discussion was too professional, nobody was ready to discuss their positions openly instead hiding behind durable political phrases. Only the Helmholtz-president tried to break out of that habit, challenging the complacency but even his comments pearled off. It probably did not help that the only head of an industrial research department was only asked very, very few questions. Maybe he could have said more if the moderation had permitted. The questions from the audience were very limited but at least two topics made it into my own notes. One question asked the lonely politician how he assessed the quality of science lobbying which yielded a very diplomatic answer (essentially, it has improved in the last few years but the starting point was non-existentence). Another question regarding lack of long-term contracts led to an almost emootional comment by Jürgen Mlynek (Helmholtz president). He pointed out that the biggest problem was ignored by the panel – the psychological problem, that young researcher do not expect to have it easy but they need to see that the hard work they are putting in will enable them to have a life. That seems to be exactly to the point.

last session

After another coffee and career break the last session repeated the morning workshops. This time I went to the workshop on ‘Nachwuchsgruppen’. The term itself deserves some criticism. It seems to be a German (perhaps European) phenomenon to call everyone who isn’t a tenured professor Nachwuchs – that’s offspring, new blood, younglings, kids, whatever. This enables an attitude of looking down on anybody who isn’t a tenured professor. It’s annoying, it’s disrespectful (think of a non-tenured PI here) and in stark contrast to the Anglo-Saxon culture where (grad) students are already treated with almost the same respect as everybody else. Ok, enough ranting.

Getting back on the topic, this session was perhaps the best session (and it’s a shame that there were not more of this kind). The main reason was that it gave the next step (in this session, grants for PI positions) a face. This was perfect timing after the aforementioned comment by Jürgen Mlynek on the psychology of things. To meet four researchers that have taken the next step and become PIs with 5-7 years (extendable) contracts was, I think, for most people in the room a very welcomed experience. The talks by Tilman Brummer, Zuzana Storchova, Christoph Eberl and Kristian Kersting were also among the best when it came to quality. They introduced the application process and added the personal experiences of both the procedure and the actual beginning of this next career step. I am wondering if the parallel session (on careers outside of academia) was equally interesting. Judging from the program it was senior executives instead of people closer to the situation of the postdocs present. It was unfortunate that not all of these sessions were accessible. I hope they’ll do it differently next time since I felt that this session was ‘what it’s all about’.

The session concluded the day for me since I did not join the dinner at the German consulate – I met some old friends from Berlin who came to visit Boston that day so I did the other part of networking, instead of new ties I strengthened old ones.

Continuing my posts on the GAIN conference, let me jump right back in.

The second break-out session

The second and final break-out of the day was field specific. So as usual for a mathematician, I ended up in the ‘natural but not life sciences’ session. Again, this was one big Q&A, this time with Karin Zach (of the physics/mathematics/geo sciences office at the DFG) as well as a physics prof from Heidelberg (I forgot the name and he’s not in the program, my apologies). I don’t remember all the questions I must admit. One interesting one was how to get Karin Zach’s job. Interestingly enough she told us that most people get to her/a similar DFG-position after their first postdoc and that there’s a high fluctuation especially now that science management is becoming a topic and more jobs appear outside the funding agencies. I asked if the DFG offered any assistance on accessing the funding opportunities within and through the EU which she had to decline. This was one example for a recurring theme that bugged me during the conference.

It was extremely Germany-centric, all about ‘getting us home’ instead of ‘getting us back to Europe’ (let alone ‘getting the best minds in the world’). As much as I understand that circumstances do not allow for an absolutely open approach (e.g. the regulations for the funding agencies prohibit a more open, European point of view) I think it is the biggest mistake and very unfortunate for us, the researchers, wanting to return. One huge advantage of the American system is its size; Europe could compete if only it would want to. This reminded me of the response by Helmut Schwarz to the ‘80%’-question in the preceding session. He replied (referring to the larger (albeit shrinking) tenure track market in the US) along the lines of “Well, but if you get a position in the US you don’t want any kind of position – you want one at a great university”. As true as that may be, it was absolutely not the point. The point is that in the American system, if after all the postdocs at fancy institutions you find that, after all, you won’t be in the top league of researchers in your field then you still have a much better chance of getting a life time position here, say at a small college. Sure, there won’t be ivy on the wall, but it’s a job and you might still be able to do some research, get some funding and above all stay close to your great love, you field of research. At least you have something.

For another topic in the session that I could relate to, let me take you back to the beginning. In the big opening speeches it was repeated again and again that German academic teaching was obviously excellent since there were 400 people in the room witnessing that the American system wants German graduates. Even ignoring the fact that most institutions will welcome you when you bring your own grant money, this is one classical logical fallacy that I would expect every scientist to know – coincidence does not imply causality. In the break-out session I found one possible cause. A lot of the questions began “I also survived the German academic system, …”. And this is a feeling that was (and is) easily confirmed in conversations – people who graduate in Germany do so more often in spite of the quality of teaching. If you survive the system in Germany, chances are that you must be very well trained (and probably auto-didactically).

NERDs

To end the evening everybody was invited to a buffet at MS’s New England Research and Development center across the street. I had not planned to attend but luckily I had met somebody who was kind enough to force me. The food was surprisingly good and the company more than enjoyable. I ran into some people from Ann Arbor and my lunch companion. All in all, I was very surprised how easy it was to have conversations with these people. I guess we had not only a common situation, but a common mindset.

Yesterday, the 10th GAIN conference in Boston ended and, since I attended it, I thought I should try to do some classical, journal-like blogging (at least retrospectively) and report a little on what that was all about (don’t expect me to be Gowers though).

GAIN stands for ‘German academic international network’, strangely enough this is restricted to North America (well, at least they include Canada…). The network is essentially run by three big German research funding agencies DAAD, DFG and Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation, but check out the website for details. The conference is designed to improve networking among German researchers in North America, and almost all attending had a grant of either of the three agencies (in my case, the DFG Forschungsstipendium). Instead of giving you more background (of which I learned during the conference) let me jump right in. As I’m writing retrospectively just following my notes and thoughts, this will not be meticulous.

Day 1

First impressions

I must say, having looked at the conference schedule online on Thursday evening, I had extremely low expectations. This was mostly due to the exotic nature of mathematics in this kind of environment – the schedule included lots of interesting topics for people in the life sciences plus some ‘general info’. So walking to the Cambridge Marriott Friday morning, I was pondering how much work I could get done while sitting in endless talks about (for me) irrelevant information. The first impression was then also quite unsurprisingly negative (you get what you expect); in the relatively crowded floor outside the conference rooms, which people shared with a ‘career fair’ of sorts, I maneuvered around many small groups of people from the different life sciences who were busy reconnecting and networking. When I finally found the registration desk (I blindly followed the concierge’s description and had stumbled through the fair instead of right into the registration desk) and got my badge and booklet, I took some time to read through the list of participants. And behold, including me, three mathematicians were on the list (and some computer scientists, to be fair) who I unfortunately failed to meet in person (and the liberal arts had even fewer). Since I had arrived early enough, I went on my first stroll through the career fair. On the one hand, it was an interesting experience since ‘the industry’ was not as present as usual – which made sense since the conference is for PostDocs (and beyond), so only a few big pharmaceutical companies were present and, of course, one consulting company (you can find a complete list at the GAIN homepage, they are transparent as they should). Otherwise, German universities and the big research societies/institutes (MPG, Fraunhofer, Helmholtz) were present. A curious fact was that my two former universities, LMU and FU had teamed up which, I felt, was somewhat funny for completely personal reasons. Additionally, only the TUM was present with their dual career office (of which, more later).

The beginning

Fascinatingly, the first official get together was lunch. And really, lunch, at tables, with waiters. Which was somewhat awkward since I didn’t know anyone. But it was really a good idea since, well, when you sit with a lot of PostDocs at a table it’s not actually hard to strike up a conversation, in my case a very interesting one. So not only well fed, but also more at ease socially (I’m no PiT but…) I left the lunch table for the-impossible-to-leave out (that’s conferences, not me…) speeches of by ‘politicians’. I can’t reconstruct from my notes what the speeches were about, but they were relatively short and painless – what else can you want? Well, actually, I know remember that one theme bugged me as it often does. All speakers focused on terms like ‘excellence’, ‘leaders in their field’, ‘best of the best’. This bugs me because in all the debates of recent years in Germany, it was all about elitism. What is missing is the large base of very good scientists that have no future and little standing in the academic (and certainly no positions). That base upon is missing from the conversation. And if their is no room for ‘good’ how can we still check that somebody is excellent?

An elegant solution was to have the career fair be within coffee breaks (quite literally) so after all the speeches, not only did I get coffee (hooray), but I had an interesting conversation with the head of the TUM’s dual career office. This is definitely something on my mind and although I’m not yet the correct ‘target’ for them it was interesting to hear that dual career offices are finally establishing themselves as a professional (and impartial) service to attract researchers. I hope I could convey that this is just in time as most academic couples I personally know worry about the lack of such services.

The first break-out session

On the first actual breakout session I cheated myself into the ‘wrong’ conference room – the split was organised by name but I wanted to listen to people that I found more interesting. In Berlin I had once attended a public hearing of the science-committee of the German Bundestag (the federal parliament). The session was a discussion of the experts response on a study on ‘science as a career’ in the German academic system. Mostly, it was about the lack of it, but I had a very positive impression of Helmut Schwarz, the head of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. So I went to the session where he was on the panel. There were no statements, just questions from the audience, which was the general theme of the conference. It was strange however, that the official, lofty topics from the program never came up. Instead, people started right away with quite down-to-earth questions which was much more interesting, but are more difficult to reconstruct now. I do vividly remember one person asking follow up questions quite rigorously and making a beautiful point. He pointed out that the statements essentially told him the following: If you get the prestigious Emmy Noether grant you will, at the end of that funding, be in the following position: you will have been the top of your class at university level to become a PhD candidate, the top of your ‘class’ at PhD level to get a grant to go abroad (which is required for Emmy Noether grants), at the top of your PostDoc ‘class’ when you get the Emmy Noether grant and after that you have a 80% chance of getting some kind of permanent position in the German academic system. Which led to the question: are you really trying to sell that to the smartest students that you want to keep in you research instead of ‘loosing’ them to the industry? They have to be the very best for 15 years just to get a puny permanent position for themselves? The replies to this were unfortunately simple – we should be bloody grateful that we get any grants at all, period.

Btw, my own question in that session was about future plans to improve teaching structurally – I was wondering if there were initiatives (or plans thereof) so that researchers waste less energy (in my experience the larger part of German teaching workload is wasted efforts that could be prevented with a little more structural thinking) while students get better guidance to us researchers, i.e., students have a higher chance to end up in fields they have talent for and we have a better chance of finding those talents. This question also didn’t get an answer (which might have been due to me very nervously blurting it out), but rather bounced off the political professionalism of the panel – it felt a lot like ‘I never cared about that, so why would I think about it?’. This sums up my memory of the session actually, the questions were excellent (in that I could absolutely see where they were coming from) but answered honestly only if the panel members felt their own position were flawless. I had hoped that in such a conference, the big heads were more open to listening and being self critical.

To be continued.