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Promoting equal opportunity and achieving equal participation for women and men are among BIH’s strategic goals and provide an important basis for excellent research. Despite the high percentage of female students, women remain underrepresented in certain academic fields (notably medicine), in scientific research, and in professorships. Structural barriers often hinder and impede their career path, especially when they take on family care responsibilities.
BIH seeks to remedy this situation by supporting the career paths of female scientists and clinicians. Each year, a call for applications is issued for the BIH Gender Equality Fund in order to promote the research activities of women scientists and clinicians.

From now on you can submit applications for support by a student assistant as well as consumables needed for your research. You can apply up to a maximum of 10,000 €, but you must specify the required funds in your application and explain what you need the funds for. You can use the funds for 12 months from the date of approval. The student assistant must be employed at the respective home institution and should work at least 40 hours per month if possible.

Eligibility

Early- and midcareer women scientists (postdocs, (junior) clinician scientists, junior professors and junior research group leaders) from the translational research commons of the BIH (BIH, Charité, MDC) with a translational research project in line with the BIH strategy are eligible to apply.

With the Gender Equality Fund, the BIH specifically supports women scientists with family responsibilities in order to compensate for existing disadvantages such as work prohibitions in the laboratory, multiple burdens due to family, scientific qualification and clinical work. The following conditions therefore apply to the application.

Requirements for the application:

  • Completed doctorate
  • Postdocs, (junior) clinician scientists, junior professors and junior research group leaders at BIH, Charité or MDC
  • Implementation of a translational research project
  • With reference to the topics of the BIH research platforms and focus areas
  • Family responsibilities (especially currently pregnant or on maternity or parental leave, children <12 years, single parent)
  • Female scientists with a temporary position or a scholarship will be given preferential consideration.

How to apply

Please submit your application documents via the BIH application portal. In order to be able to apply, you must register in the application portal.

Applications can be submitted until 11.5.2020 2 pm CET. You can submit the application in German or English. In the portal, we ask you to describe your research project and provide information on the required budget. The questions about the research project include points about the robustness and traceability of your project as well as the fit with the BIH strategy. An overview of the questions concerning the research project can be found on the right in the download area. Please note, that you can only answer the questions via the portal.

The evaluation of your project and the selection is based exclusively on the information you provide in the portal. Therefore please pay attention to completeness and care when answering the questions.

Selection process

The selection is made by senior scientists of the BIH.  The QUEST Center advises the Commission on the characteristics for robust and replicable research. A funding commitment is expected to be made at the end of Mai 2020.

Your application documents will be submitted anonymously to the selection committee. We would therefore ask you not to provide any personal details in your answers or in the uploaded documents unless you are explicitly asked to do so. Your personal details, which we request in the portal, are only required for the administration of the applications, but will not be made available to the Commission.

If you are selected to receive funding, the costs cannot be reimbursed until supporting documentation of the actual expenses has been provided. The funds can be spent within a period of 12 months from grant approval.

Contact details

Should you have any questions, please contact BIH’s Equal Opportunity Officer, Karin Höhne (karin.hoehne@bihealth.de, Tel: +49 30 450 543 048).

If you have any specific questions about the QUEST criteria, the evaluation procedure and good evaluation practice please contact Dr. Miriam Kip (miriam.kip@bihealth.de).

Deadline

11 May 2020, 2 pm

How to apply

Please submit your application documents via the BIH application portal. In order to be able to apply, you must register in the application portal.