Junior professors and research teams

The junior professorship as an instrument to promote junior faculty excellence in research has steadily improved since its introduction in 2002. Since the start, 64 junior professors have been appointed, 38 have stayed for appointments in permanent positions. At mid-year 2011, TU Kaiserslautern had 26 active junior professors.

The TU especially promotes the newly appointed junior researchers during the early phase of their junior professorship. Furthermore, it strives to attract research group leaders, on one hand through initiatives like the Emmy Noether program and Fraunhofer junior researcher teams as well as ERC starting grants, and on the other hand by the expansion of the university's own mentoring program. The aim is to attract additional excellent junior researchers who can then be integrated as Principal Investigators in the research initiatives.