Made the most
of it?

The Zukunftskolleg offers its fellows a close-knit and diverse support network. This not only creates ideal working conditions for young scholars but also provides the best possible preparation for their scientific careers. Some support measures are also open to Senior Fellows, Associated Fellows and non-tenured postdoctoral researchers at the University of Konstanz. 

Thus, once or twice a year, the Zukunftskolleg issues a call for applications for various funding programmes open to all non-tenured postdoctoral researchers at the University of Konstanz.
In 2021, in cooperation with KIM Recording, the Zukunftskolleg started a podcast series to better promote these funding options. You can listen to all the podcasts here:
uni-konstanz.de/zukunftskolleg/news/zuko-podcast-series

In 2022, for the first time, the Zukunftskolleg has coordinated its call for applications for several funding options together with the International Office and Research Support. In the following, you will find all the programmes that were offered in the last call and the corresponding winners: 

The programme enables non-tenured researchers at the University of Konstanz (postdoctoral researchers, junior professors, research group leaders, etc.) to network with distinguished colleagues both in Germany and abroad and to nurture these contacts.

Zukunftskolleg Podcast with Eva Lievens, Winner of a Mentorship

You can find more information on the Zukunftskolleg website:
uni-konstanz.de/zukunftskolleg/support-measures/mentorship/

The programme aims to promote research collaborations between non-tenured researchers (postdoctoral researchers, junior professors, research group leaders, etc.). An interdisciplinary research project gives grant holders the opportunity to identify and explore new, innovative and/or risky research perspectives with neighbouring disciplines and across disciplines.

Winners of Interdisciplinary Collaborative Projects in 2022

The programme aims to develop cooperation between non-tenured researchers (postdoctoral researchers, junior professors, research group leaders, etc.) and the non-academic sector. Grants are awarded in support of cooperation that fosters joint research projects with industrial partners, companies, social institutions, cultural institutions, archives, public bodies or non-profit organizations.

Zukunftskolleg Podcast with Jennifer Randerath, Winner of an Intersectoral Cooperation Project

This programme seeks to enhance international research cooperation and to support international mobility. The Zukunftskolleg of the University of Konstanz provides funding for Research Visits for international early career researchers (Invited Research Visits), Research Visits for international early career researchers from partner research institutions (Network Research Visits) as well as Research Visits for Zukunftskolleg Fellows (Outgoing Research Visits).

Winner of a Research Visit in 2022

Network Research Visit

Ekaterina Mikhailova
Politics and Public Administration
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland

You can find more information on the Zukunftskolleg website:
uni-konstanz.de/zukunftskolleg/support-measures/research-visit

The funding programme aims to promote independent research by postdoctoral researchers at the University of Konstanz. In particular, we encourage applications which support the exploration of new ideas and for implementing pilot projects. The grant can cover consumables, equipment, travel costs and student research assistants.

Zukunftskolleg Podcast with Katharina Zahner-Ritter, Winner of an Independent Research Grant

Once they have finished their projects, we ask the funding programme winners to submit a final report. Here are examples of projects within the Independent Research Grant funding programme that were successfully completed in 2021:

“EWE: Entwicklung eines Wissenstests für Erwachsenenbildner*innen / Development of a knowledge test for adult educators”

With her project “EWE”, Susanne Wißhak developed and piloted a test instrument to assess trainers’ transfer knowledge. The effectiveness of adult learning is evaluated as the degree to which learners use the acquired knowledge, skills and attitudes in their daily lives. For this kind of transfer to occur, the new competencies must be generalized to new contexts and maintained over a certain period of time. To conduct an expert survey and to analyze and publish her results, she applied for an Independent Research Grant (IRG). The pilot study contained test responses of 105 completed datasets that were scaled and interpreted using an IRT-scaled partial credit model for single- and multi-level response categories. The study was conducted with ten trainers. Susanne Wißhak included five additional experts from research and practice, who evaluated each item with regard to the relevance and representation of the construct “transfer knowledge” on the basis of a 5-point Likert scale (1 = agree to 5 = disagree). Her results showed that the experts rated items as relevant and representative for the assessment of transfer knowledge. In sum, the results of the qualitative and quantitative studies indicated that transfer knowledge can be operationalized and reliably measured using her instrument. In mid-December, Susanne and her colleagues submitted a paper to the “Zeitschrift für Weiterbildungsforschung (ZfW)”.

Susanne’s “EWE” project was also part of her postdoctoral degree (habilitation). According to Susanne, she had the opportunity to include a doctoral candidate in the project, as well as founding her own research group and supervising her own doctoral candidates through the IRG funding. This is an important step for her towards qualifying for a tenured position in academia.
Why did she apply for an Independent Research Grant in the first place? “In general, I expected support in taking the next step on my path to becoming an independent researcher, as well as an opportunity to expand my independence and prepare larger projects,” she recalls. These expectations were not only fulfilled, she says, but she could also join the Zukunftskolleg as an Associated Fellow. This made it possible to join the Jour fixe meetings and other events, where everyone made her feel very welcome and part of the ZuKo community.

“Microbial-mediated protection against virus infections”

Ana del Arco started her project about conditions for virophage reactivation and its impact on virus replication and host population survival because little is known about virophage replication and reactivation. But it is crucial to understand under which conditions this natural host population’s protection by the virophage can inhibit virus infection and prevent an epidemic in the host population. Virophages are virus-dependent, meaning virophages’ replication depends on their parasitism on virus virion-factory to make their own virions. Virus production decreases or is inhibited, which leads to a higher survival in host populations. Ana del Arco used a model system consisting of host-virus-virophage (Cafeteria burkhardae-CroV-Mavirus). She identified host resistance clones. This resistance revealed itself through host evolution or the presence of a virophage acting as a protective microbe against the virus. She tried to identify the mechanisms behind host resistance. Therefore, she pursued two objectives: to investigate host resistance mechanisms and study virophage reactivation in host resistance clones. Host resistance can be either due to ecological factors, virophage presence and reactivation, evolution of host resistance or eco-evo factors, e.g. the evolution of the host to allow virophage integration and its reactivation. Ana’s goal was to test whether virophage reactivation can prevent the host population from becoming extinct following viral infections and if this reactivation is influenced by the environmental history of the host.

Through her project, Ana not only collected new data which can foster future questions but could also identify various scenarios resulting in host survival. Specifically, the evolution of host resistance in some clones, while in others their survival is mediated by virophage protection. This provided her with many answers for her main research question. Related to her first objective, her results show that virophage is integrated in hosts, but its reactivation does not always result in protection even when it always reactivates. Furthermore, some host clones developed resistance; their survival was not mediated by the virophage inhibition of the virus. Lastly, the exposure to antiviral material was the differing ecological factor between the different clone populations, and she has detected a higher virophage integration in clones subjected to continuous antiviral exposure, though the mechanisms explaining this link are still yet unknown. For her second objective, her results showed that virophage reactivation occurs, but does not always prevent virus infections, thus driving hosts to extinction.

Ana del Arco’s project has consolidated her independence by advancing her understanding of the experimental microbial community. “I have a deeper knowledge of its ecology and evolution, allowing me to propose further questions in future project applications on the understanding of symbiotic interactions,” she says. She presented her results as a part of a larger experiment in two conferences: “DynaTraits” in October 2021 in Potsdam, Germany, and “SESBE” (Spanish Society for Evolutionary Biology) in February 2022 in Vigo, Spain.

How could the Independent Research Grant help her with her project? “It was an excellent opportunity to target a new question and develop the necessary additional experiments and to have the chance to obtain support for experiments that could not be anticipated,” she says. Her project also benefitted the outcome of her German Research Foundation project. In fact, the results have been used to apply for a new project on “Genetic changes behind co-evolving host-virus-virophage symbionts”, which has been funded by the university’s Young Scholar Fund for start-up funding and co-funding for research projects.

In her project, Joanna Ruszkiewicz investigated the genoprotective effects of so-called nicotinamide riboside (NR), which is a precursor of cellular cofactor nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD⁺). With her project, Joanna tried to elucidate molecular mechanisms behind NR’s effects in vivo. She therefore developed her main technical objective, which was to adapt an in vitro genotoxicity assay – an automated fluorometric analysis of DNA unwinding, called FADU – to “Caenorhabditis elegans”, a popular in vivo model in biomedical research. This method, with its suitability for high-throughput screening, was a significant addition to currently used techniques in genetic toxicology. Joanna’s aim was also to investigate the potentially protective effects of NR in response to genotoxic stress in vivo via multiple molecular and population-based readouts. At this point in time, the foundation of her project is still being used to continue research within two ongoing master’s theses, where one was already submitted and co-supervised by Joanna. She also submitted her manuscript “Fuelling genome maintenance: On the versatile roles of NAD⁺ in preserving DNA integrity” to the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC). Concerning the results of her project, Joanna formulated five objectives: evaluation of genotoxic stress through the measurement of DNA damage using automated fluorometric analysis of DNA unwinding (FADU), evaluation of NR effects on genotoxic stress in C. elegans, quantification of NAD⁺ content in C. elegans using enzymatic cycling assay, evaluation of genotoxicant-induced stress on a molecular level with the aid of green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporter strains and elucidation of NAD⁺-dependent molecular pathways contributing to genome maintenance and genotoxic stress response, using deletion mutants targeting PARPs and SIRTs mutants.

For her first objective, she analyzed cells isolated from the whole worms, according to the protocol for cell isolation for comet assay, as well as the whole worms. In the first approach, she detected a high level of background DNA damage, only approximately 50% of the total DNA remained double-stranded (dsDNA). The result remained despite changing the isolation conditions, such as reducing the incubation time with digestion reagents. She therefore used the whole, undigested worms for further tests, which has also been suggested as less harmful and still effective in measuring genomic instability. As a result, the sample preparation without sonication and cell lysis, as well as short alkaline unwinding (15 minutes), produced a high amount of intact dsDNA regardless of the sample size. Hence, the effect of various genotoxins is tested, which has previously been shown to induce DNA double-strand breaks in vitro, but no DNA damage could be detected in the applied conditions.

For her second objective, she analyzed the effect of NR supplementation in worms exposed to genotoxic agents such as H₂O₂ and DNA alkylating agents: 2-chloroethyl ethyl sulphide (CEES) and chlormethine (HN2). As a result, it did not affect the worms’ susceptibility to genotoxins. Moreover, NR did not affect the development or genotoxicity of germline cells. For her third objective, Joanna measured total NAD⁺ levels in C. elegans at different developmental stages in order to assess the effectiveness of NR – the NAD⁺ levels could be elevated with applied NR supplementation. She also evaluated the NAD⁺ levels in response to genotoxins. In contrast to numerous in vitro studies, the toxic concentrations of stressors did not lead to a consistent NAD⁺ depletion in the nematodes, which might explain the lack of protective effects of NAD⁺ supplementation via NR. Joanna also evaluated for her fourth objective the effect of NR on germline cells’ apoptosis and counted the number of apoptotic corpses visualized with a fluorescent microscope. The NR supplementation did not prevent a CEES-induced increase in germline apoptosis, on the contrary, it showed a trend in potentiating genotoxic effects. Due to a lack of protective effects of NR and difficulties with an adaption of the FADU assay (Objective 1), she had not addressed this objective by the time she submitted her report. 

Not everything in Joanna’s project went according to plan. “Some delays occurred due to personal and technical problems, as well as with the delivery of purchased materials and pandemic-related restrictions,” she recalls. Nevertheless, most of her project objectives could be addressed in a timely manner. It was also a great starting point on her way to gaining scientific independence. But she will need more time and resources in order to raise the project to a level suitable for an independent application for external funding, which was her original attempt. “For me, the programme was a great way to acquire funding and project management experience,” says Joanna. “Especially the organization of the proposal submission and communication were clear and effective. All my expectations were fully met,” she assures.