In its last meeting on May 6 the Executive Committee decided about the winners of the Mentorship programme (application deadline was on April 30). We congratulate Liliana Ruth Feierstein (Literature) who will be mentored by Nora Strejilevich from the San Diego State University, Lorna Gregory (Mathematics and Statistics) who will be mentored by Francoise Delon from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, Aswin Mangerich (Biology) who will be mentored by Peter C. Dedon from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Muna Pohl (Linguistics) who will be mentored by René Willibrord Joseph Karger from the University of Utrecht, Nils B. Weidmann (Politics and Public Administration) who will be mentored by Jason Lyall from the Yale University and Martin Welz (Politics and Public Administration) who will be mentored by Adekeye Adebajo from the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town. For more information on the Mentorship programme see: http://www.zukunftskolleg.uni-konstanz.de/funding-programmes/mentorship/

Another Senior Fellow arrived at the Zukunftskolleg: We are warmly welcoming Sandeep Verma from the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. He has been nominated by Daniel Summerer and will be our guest until July 15, 2013. A main part of Sandeep Verma´s research deals with the use of nucleobases, nucleotides, as well as oligonucleotides which provides a direct link to Daniel Summerer´s research programme. For Sandeep Verma it´s already his second stay at the Zukunftskolleg; last time he has been nominated by Alumnus Jörg Hartig and stayed from May until July 2011.

The Zukunftskolleg is warmly welcoming Senior Fellow Viktor V. Kabanov from the Department of Complex Matter at the Jozef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He has been nominated by Jure Demsar. After his last stay in Konstanz in autumn 2012, this time the Senior Fellow will be our guest until June 11, 2013. The theoretical physicist is an expert in superconductivity and ultrafast phenomena in complex solids. During his stay he will join forces with experimental colleagues at the University of Konstanz to work on the projects “Electron relaxation in noble metals” and „Superconducting gap dynamics in electron doped cuprate high temperature superconductors“.

We congratulate Zukunftskolleg Alumnus Wolfgang Freitag who has been offered a professorship in “Epistemology and Theory of Science” at the University College Freiburg. Wolfgang Freitag was a Fellow from December 2006 until January 2012. We wish him all the best!

The Zukunftskolleg congratulates Helen Gunter who was appointed as teaching deputy in the department of Biology at the University of Konstanz. In summer term 2013 and winter term 2013/14 she will substitute for Prof. Ph.D Axel Meyer from the chair of Zoology and Evolutionary Biology in teaching.

During the Jour Fixe on April 25 the assembly of members elected Margaret Thomas as a new member for the Executive Committee. She replaces Dominik Wöll. We congratulate Margaret Thomas and thank Dominik Wöll very much for his work in the Executive Committee.

On April 18 and 19 the new members of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Zukunftskolleg held their first meeting in Konstanz. The first day started in the evening with a guided tour by historian Harald Derschka through the historic premises of the Steigenberger Inselhotel, a former cloister. On Friday morning the rector of the University of Konstanz, Ulrich Rüdiger, opened the meeting in the Senatssaal and welcomed the new board members as well as the director and the Fellows of the Zukunftskolleg. Joachim Nettelbeck, former member of the Scientific Advisory Board, gave a review of the work of the last years. Then a short round of introductions by the new members of the Scientific Advisory Board followed, before the Fellows of the Zukunftskolleg presented their research in Lightning Talks. The director of the Zukunftskolleg, Giovanni Galizia, informed about the status quo of the Zukunftskolleg and the expectations of the Scientific Advisory Board. In the following round table discussion important questions were discussed in the plenum. After lunch in the Common Room of the Zukunftskolleg the Scientific Advisory Board met for an internal meeting, before they gave a feedback concerning the future development of the Zukunftskolleg to the director, the Executive Committee and the Back Office.

Associated Fellow Roland Weierstall was involved in a study that analysed the attractiveness of veterans. For this he and his colleagues interviewed more than 1.000 women, which type of man - out of four different types with and without posttraumatic stress disorder and aggression - they would prefer for a long-term or short-term relationship.

The study was published in the journal “Evolutionary Psychology”. Read more about it in the press release (in German).

On April 15, the Recruitment Committee held its first meeting to select new Fellows for the Zukunftskolleg. In its most recent call for proposals (closing date for applications was March 15, 2013), the Zukunftskolleg received more than 180 applications for the 2-year Postdoctoral and 5-year Research Fellowships, as part of the Marie Curie Zukunftskolleg Incoming Fellowship Programme (ZIF) supported by the European Union COFUND Programme. The Recruitment Committee chose 35 finalists for the 2-year Postdoctoral Fellowships and 4 finalists for the 5-year Research Fellowships. In the coming weeks, these applications will be judged by external peer reviewers. In its next meeting on June 17, the Committee will select the final 15 candidates for the 2-year Fellowships. The candidates for the 5-year Research Fellowships are invited to take part in the “Workshop on Future Research Directions” at the University of Konstanz that will be held on June 17 as well. Following the Workshop, the Committee will make the final decision concerning the 5-year Fellowships.

We welcome Martin Elff (Politics and Public Administration), Philip Leifeld (Politics and Public Administration), Elena Rosseeva (Chemistry) and Filip Wojciechowski (Chemistry) at the Zukunftskolleg. Elena Rosseeva is one of the new 5-year Research Fellows, the three men are new 2-year Postdoctoral Fellows. All were selected in the last call for applications and started their Fellowship in April.