The Young Investigator Network is the platform and democratic representation of interests for independent junior research group leaders and junior professors at the Karlsruhe Institut of Technology.

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In 2022, YIN members received several outstanding prizes, set a new record for attracting additional third-party funding, and published a significantly higher number of papers in peer-reviewed journals - including seven publications in Nature Communications and Nature Energy. While most COVID19-related restrictions are now behind us, the pandemic has also demonstrated the viability of alternative working models. Picking up on this theme, the Hot Topic focuses on "Job-Sharing for Professors." This new concept seems to especially attract female scientists and is particularly rare in math and the natural sciences. Read to learn more.

With the Research Career Development Award, the Hector Fellow Academy supports outstanding researchers in the phase between postdoc and professorship. "The award will enable my group to explore artificially fabricated arrays of magnets on an atomic scale," says Philip Willke. He hopes that this new type of system will make it possible to better understand certain phenomena that arise from the basic constituents of matter. As one of three grantees, he will receive funding for a doctoral position and become a five-year member of the Hector Fellow Academy, which connects excellent researchers from the natural and engineering sciences, medicine and psychology.

Physicist Ulrich W. Paetzold and chemist Frank Biedermann have each received one of the prestigious Consolidator Grants of the European Research Council (ERC). Their projects in the fields of photovoltaics and medical sensor technology respectively will be funded with approximately two million euros over the next five years. With the LAMI-PERO project, Paetzold aims to fabricate highly efficient and stable perovskite thin films over large areas. In the SupraSense project, Biedermann plans to develop highly specific yet easy-to-manufacture sensors for medical diagnostics. Over the years, 19 YIN members - some now alumni - successfully acquired an ERC grant.
KIT press release