Category Archives: Events

Eurodoc 2016. Early stage researchers’ training – which future?

Events

Salome Adam, William Ralvenius and Clemens Nyffeler attended to annual Eurodoc conference as well as the Annual General Meeting in Luxembourg from 20-23 April 2016.

They have written an interesting report about discussions on the future of young researchers in Europe, European funding schemes and eastern european PhD training…

Continue reading Eurodoc 2016. Early stage researchers’ training – which future? →

actionuni attends hearing of the Science, Education and Culture Committee SECC

Events, Position paper

On 13 April 2016, co-president Florian Lippke (University of Fribourg) represented actionuni during a hearing of Science, Education and Culture Committee SECC of the National Council (WBK-N / CSEC-N). The hearing regarded the recently released federal message on education, research and innovation policy.

actionuni stressed as its main points:

  • Increase the financial growth rate in the message to 3-4% annually
  • Not to jeopardize those actions that are aimed at improving career paths for young researchers if there are budget cuts
  • Increase the number of new Tenure Track positions from 40  to 100 new positions per year
  • Definition of concrete actions and indicators for measuring the success of reaching the goal of improving careers for young researchers.

A position paper to support Florian Lippke’s presentation was developed by the board:

BFI-Botschaft 2017-2020_Position Mittelbau_WBK-N 13-04-16_d

Message FRI 2017-2020_Positions Corps intermédiaire_CSEC-N 13-04-16_f

WBK-N_Präsentation_Lippke_actionuni_FR

actionuni meets with swissuniversities, VSS and swissfaculty

Events

Last week, three members of the board of actionuni were invited to a meeting with the new president of swissuniversities, Prof. Dr. Michael Hengartner, the secretary general and vice secretary general of swissuniversities, Dr. Martina Weiss and Dr. Sabine Felder, as well as representatives of VSS and swissfaculty.

We had an open brainstorming about topics that could be of common interest and should therefore be pursued jointly in the future. Moreover, we addressed the issue that actionuni is not represented in any of swissuniversities’ commitees .

The following important issues where we prospectively should work together were identified:

  • political statements
  • commitment for a Switzerlands integration into the European research and innovation area
  • exchange about career options for young researchers

Annual meeting with representatives of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)

Events

In November 2015, a delegation of the board of actionuni met with representatives of SNSF. The very positive exchange focused on:

  • the impact of financial austerity in Switzerland on the funding of research,
  • access of researchers of Universities of Applied Sciences and Universities of Teacher Education to SNSF funding,
  • the future of academic careers,
  • permeability of SNSF funded and University funded career paths,
  • conditions of employment non-professorial academic staff
  • academic independence of non-professorial academic staff
  • funding of interdisciplinary research of non-professorial academic staff, and
  • the flexibility of SNSF-instruments for researcher with families.