Career support and Research Groups

Supporting early career researchers is one of our key priorities.

Doctoral Studies

The IPN provides its doctoral students optimal conditions to complete their PhDs within an appropriate timeframe. In 2005 the institute re-established procedures regarding processing and supervision of dissertations. All parties including doctoral candidates and supervisors have a voluntary commitment to the Institute. This facilitates a well-structured doctoral period and successfully completed research project at the IPN. The IPN offers 75% FTE contracts. The 3+1 model allows extending the three-years contract by one more year if the completion of the doctorate is foreseeable within this period.

Mentoring program

With the internal mentoring program, all doctoral students are assigned two mentors across departments. They accompany the work in addition to the official dissertation supervisors. They provide support around and beyond the topic of the dissertation project.

Stays abroad

Funding for scientific staff at the IPN also includes the opportunity to spend several months abroad, which the Institute also supports financially. This gives doctoral students the opportunity to establish international cooperation at an early career stage and to gain a sense of how their work fits into the research landscape beyond Germany.

IPN Graduate School

An internal graduate school has existed at the institute since fall 2012. This provides doctoral students with an initial orientation at the IPN and teaches essential skills for the best possible start to independent research.

The program offers a mixture of lectures, exercises, seminars and workshops. The focus is on quantitative and qualitative data collection methods and statistical analysis procedures. An annual ten-day winter school supplements the events held during the semester. Invited experts from other research institutions work with the doctoral students and prepare them for their own research careers.

Postdoctoral Researchers

The IPN's support for early career researchers does not end once they have received their doctoral degrees. Emerging academics who have conducted outstanding doctoral work and wish to remain in academia can establish an independent research track record at the IPN.

The Institute has defined guidelines for postdoctoral careers, whose aim is to propel postdocs toward a tenured position at a higher education institution. The IPN provides a diverse range of support to researchers launching their careers in academia. We can offer financial support for stays abroad for postdocs, as for doctoral researchers, and arrange opportunities for them to gain teaching experience. The success of the IPN’s policies for emerging researchers is evident in this cohort’s high rates of appointments to tenured academic posts.

Gender-equitable personnel development measures are anchored in the Gender Equality Plan (2024-2028). In this document two research group leader positions are planned for particularly qualified women scientists. This will enable outstanding female scientists to set up their own research group at an early stage.

Early Academic Research Groups at the IPN