Helmholtz kickstarts the careers of 19 postdocs

As part of its international Postdoc Programme, the Helmholtz Association has selected 19 recently graduated PhD students to support them in the early stages of their careers. The candidates will each receive €300,000 in instalments over the next three years, which is intended to help them get established in their area of research and develop their scientific competence. The programme aimes at young researchers who have obtained outstanding results in their doctorate in Germany or abroad in the past twelve months.

“Without the contribution of young researchers, no progress would be made in research and technology,” says Jürgen Mlynek, President of the Helmholtz Association. “Therefore, it is important to support these young to develop their potential as efficiently as possible.” He adds that the programme is also an excellent means of attracting talented young researchers to Germany.

Comprehensive support

As part of the programme, each postdoc is assigned a mentor, to whom they can turn for advice and help, also in difficult situations. The financial support the young researchers receive primarily allows them to pay their own salary and that of a technical assistant, if required, as well as any associated travel costs. As another cornerstone of the programme, the postdocs are also given the option to gain experience abroad. They can decide which country they would like to go to as well as the precise purpose of their trip. In addition, Helmholtz postdocs can attend further training courses offered by the Helmholtz Academy for Leadership to develop their management skills.

An internationally attractive programme

The 19 successful postdocs outperformed other excellent applicants in a multi-stage competition judged by an independent jury of distinguished international experts. A total of 88 young researchers expressed an interest in the programme to one of the 18 Helmholtz Centres and 28 of these went on to submit applications. In the final round, eleven female and eight male applicants were admitted to the programme – ten were applicants from abroad.

The next call for applications for the Postdoc Programme will be published in spring 2015.

The 19 postdocs were selected on the basis of the following projects:

Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research
Dr Johann Philipp Klages: The dynamics of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet during the Cenozoic: Long-term palaeoglaciologic and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions on shallow drill- and gravity core records and high-resolution geophysical data from the Amundsen Sea Embayment shelf

German Cancer Research Centre
Dr Kshitij Srivastava: Metabolic reprogramming of tumor endothelial cells to overcome anti-angiogenic resistance

German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Dr Stefan Wilbert: Impact of Desert Environment on Solar Energy Systems
Dr Natalie Kaifler: Continuous lidar measurements of gravity waves in the middle atmosphere with CORAL (Compact Rayleigh Autonomous Lidar) in the Andes
Dr Katrin Krohn: Cryovolcanic features on Ceres, Europa and Enceladus: Evidence for habitable environments
Dr Engin Ciftyurek: Gas sensors for harsh environments of aerospace application

Forschungszentrum Jülich
Dr Anja Klotzsche: Ground-penetrating radar full-waveform inversion to assess hydrological and biogeochemical subsurface properties for climate relevant regions at various scales
Dr Ewa Mlynczak: Epitaxial nanostructures for spin-orbitronics (EpiSpin)
Dr Julen Ibanez-Azpiroz: Theory of quantum spin-fluctuations in nano-magnets
Dr Derya Baran: Understanding the correlation between microstructure and recombination in solution processes solar cells

GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
Dr Jonathan V. Durgadoo: The Indian Ocean in a changing climate

Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ ? German Research Centre for Geosciences
Dr Patricia Martinez-Garzon: Earthquake hazard due to reservoir stimulation: A geomechanical study linking natural and induced seismicity

GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research / Helmholtz Institute Mainz
Dr John W. Blanchard: Applications of chemistry to physics beyond the standard model: Hyperpolarized nuclear targets and an NMR-based axion search

Helmholtz Zentrum München – German Research Center for Environmental Health
Dr Sithandiwe Eunice Mazibuko: Natural compounds offer new treatments for insulin resistance and diabetes

Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht Centre for Materials and Coastal Research
Dr Li Wang: Investigations on L1² phase and partioning behaviour of alloying elements in Co-base superalloys

Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research
Dr Hagen Richter: Elucidating the mechanisms of spacer acquisition in prokaryotic CRISPRCas immunity

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Dr Anna Böhmer: New d- and f- electron materials with strong electronic correlations

Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
Dr Josefine Proll: Turbulence in optimised stellarators – towards fusion on the reactor scale
Dr Sina Fietz: The response of tokamak plasmas to 3D external fields