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After all, working in an interdisciplinary context is not always easy for the PhD students and postdocs at CATALPA. At CATALPA, researchers from different disciplines work together. Different specialized language alone can cause problems here. "Some terms, for example, may have a different meaning in computer science than in educational science," explains Heike Karolyi, elected spokesperson for the junior researchers, who is also a member of the CATALPA leadership team. "Everyone needs to be aware of that to avoid misunderstandings." In addition to communication during joint work, the steps that each discipline performs separately must also be well coordinated. Only in this way can the work for the next step be coordinated and later supplemented.

Raise awareness for challenges

The Junior Researchers Day was intended to provide an opportunity to raise awareness of these challenges in deliberately interdisciplinary and cross-project working groups. The groups worked out how collaboration can succeed and defined framework conditions and strategies for this. At the end of the day, the participants had the opportunity to exchange ideas on the topic of dissertations in a protected environment.

The program and the course of the event were organized by the young scientists themselves with their own budget. This autonomy and self-determination are central to CATALPA's support of junior researchers. "We are in the fortunate position of being able to give them this freedom for their research," says CATALPA Managing Director Dr. Stephanie Steimann. For this reason, the research center's PhD students and postdocs are deliberately not required to teach. However, they do have the opportunity to regularly obtain input for their own projects: once a month, a junior researchers' colloquium takes place, at which everyone has the opportunity to alternately present and discuss an interim status of their research. From time to time, there are also external speakers at the colloquium on topics that affect many equally.

Support through graduate service and mentoring

In May 2023, a total of 19 PhD students are CATALPA members. All of their qualifying theses are accompanied by supervisors from two disciplines. Additional support is provided by the Graduate Service of the FernUniversität.

Twelve of the CATALPA members are already in the postdoc phase. They have the opportunity to further qualify themselves in various positions at the research center, for example in a research professorship or in the management of an independent project. There are external mentoring offers for them, for example by members of the international Scientific Advisory Board of CATALPA. A special feature of CATALPA within the FernUni are the Junior Research Groups: Equipped with a full PhD student position and their own budget, young researchers can start their independent research career here.