Culture
To outsiders, it must have been a strange scene: one of Boston’s largest hotels in busy Copley Square. Hundreds of people at a major scientific conference. Nothing out of the ordinary, just a stone’s throw from Harvard, MIT and some of the world’s leading scientific institutions. What’s unusual: everyone speaks German.
The reason is the annual GAIN conference. GAIN, which stands for German Academic International Network, is a network for scientists from Germany who are mobile around the world. The focus is on North America; GAIN is based in New York. The highlight of the year is the GAIN Annual Conference, which is held alternately in San Francisco and Boston and is the most important meeting place for all those who are doing research in North America and would like to return to Germany, as well as for those who are interested in these academics continuing their careers at their university, research institution or state. That’s where the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Science and the NRW Return Programme come in.
The basic idea of the Return Programme is as simple as it is successful: every year since 2007, the state has funded outstanding researchers who used to live in Germany but now work all over the world. The topic changes every year, and each of the six grants is worth 1.25 million euros over five years to set up a research group at a university in North Rhine-Westphalia.
From left to right: Dr. Fabian Schulz, MKW; Prof. Dr. Johannes Wessels, Rektor der Universität Münster; Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Michael Hoch, Rektor der Universität Bonn
Putting it all together, the Return programme is a perfect match for the GAIN Annual Conference. Accordingly, the Ministry of Science is regularly present there. Be it digitally, due to the pandemic, or, since 2023, finally present again. The focus is on the Talent Fair, THE marketplace of the annual conference, where a wide range of German institutions present themselves with smaller and larger stands. And where, of course, the returning scientists who have travelled from all over North America will be looking for the right next step in their careers. The fact that this is not just a casual stroll with free pens or other giveaways becomes clear in conversations with Return Programme fellows. “I first heard about the programme at GAIN,” is a common refrain.
Once again, the Ministry of Science and Research’s stand was overflowing with interested parties, and it will be interesting to see whether, at the end of the recently launched Materials Science call for proposals, some of those selected will be able to look back at the GAIN Annual Conference at the end of August 2023 and say that their exciting next career step was initiated there.
