CIPSM Funding Information

The board members of CIPSM would like to take the opportunity to inform you about the funding possibilities that exist for CIPSM members within the excellence cluster, the Munich Center of Integrated Protein Science. The funds are provided by the Excellence Initiative of the Federal Republic of Germany and the States of the Federal Republik of Germany via the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

Family and Career Support Program

This program shall help researchers to accomplish family duties syncronous to excellent scientific work. Particular attention is given to help female junior group leaders, which are pregnant or which have already children to combine their educational and child raising responsibilities with their professional duties. Support includes funding of a technician, funding of childcare costs and also financial support for professional house keeping. For more information visit the CIPSM homepage (gender support program) and contact Prof. K. Jung.

Support of Research Area

CIPSM pays up 800.000,00 € per year into six different research areas to strengthen research in diverse areas of protein science. Each branch decides individually how the funds are distributed. It can be used to provide support for the research of the principle investigators in the research areas or to establish new tenure track professorships. Alternatively, the funds can be used to provide additional support for existing junior groups. The research areas can fund equipment or establish a high profile full professorship. CIPSM funds can be combined with funding from other sources e.g. from the Universities, SFBs or Industry. If new junior groups are to be established we strongly recommend that excellence and complementary expertise of the new group are prime criteria for hiring. This allows the research areas to seek additional support through the Emmy Noether Programme of the DFG, the Sofja Kovalevskaja program of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation or the tenure track program provided by the Volkswagen Foundation. There exist numerous other junior group support programs. The research areas are strongly encouraged to use the nimbus of the excellence centers to attract additional support in order to make maximal use of the Research Area Support.

We encourage regular meeting of the principle investigators in the individual research areas to ensure that the funds are properly allocated.

Individual Grants: Opportunity Fund

CIPSM can provide support through a PhD and postdoc pool to fund additional research projects. These projects should be located between research areas to establish cross fertilization between the research blocks. The research goals should be set so that high impact results, publishable in the very best journals are achieved. The focus of these grants is to support novel approaches and to open up new high profile opportunities. This support is supposed to push certain aspects of protein science into a new direction and to build up new expertise. Researchers supported by such a grant are strongly encouraged to seek additional support from other sources such as DFG Normalverfahren or Volkswagen foundation. CIPSM can not fund standard individual projects. The opportunity fund is extremely competitive because it is restricted to about 800.000,00 € per year in total. Proposals can be submitted at certain deadlines announced on the WEB site via the coordinator. The coordinator will make a pre-selection handing only the most promising research projects over to the board. The board will make a further selection and the coordinators assembly will finally decide about funding.

Large Scale Equipment Grant

CIPSM can support funding of large scale equipment. These funds are not supposed to fund individual needs. The additional CIPSM support is intended to create technology platforms in Munich, which do currently not exist. Emphasis will be placed on the notion, that this support is given exclusively to enable researcher in Munich to tackle problems, which were not addressable before due a lack of equipment. Funding of large scale equipment is directed by strategic decisions guided by our believe that we have to strengthen the systems approach. Munich is extremely strong in research areas dealing with individual proteins but is weaker in our desire to link protein science to medicine on the systems level. We plan to strengthen at the LMU technology in the areas of proteomics and model organisms. Researcher who plan to establish a new technology platform with CIPSM support are requested to raise a minimum of 30% of the needed support from other (non CIPSM) sources.

Proposals can be submitted at certain deadlines announced on the WEB site directly to the board. Funding will be provided based on strategic arguments. CIPSM needs to position itself in the strongest possible way to compete successfully with life science clusters established at other universities.

Symposia and Lectures

Every CIPSM member can suggest focused symposia, invite guest professors or organize a high profile lecture in his research area. CIPSM will support such activities with extra funds. Please observe the Events to find out about activities.

If research results are obtained with the help of CIPSM support, the principle investigator has to name CIPSM in the address list e.g.

Munich Center for Protein Science at the Department of .....

CIPSM funds provide extra research support based on excellence criteria. The CIPSM board therefore strongly encourages active publishing. The DFG strictly requests that the CIPSM board closely monitors the publication records of CIPSM supported researchers and of the six research areas. If the publication record is not in full agreement with the excellence status, funding of the research areas and of individuals has to be adjusted in the second year.

The support granted by CIPSM is available in detail on the internal CIPSM Website.