Dear Readers,

looking back on 2017, our university is clearly making good progress in its chosen direction, especially when it comes to early career support. Following our successful performance in the federal and state government programme to promote young scientists, 21 new professorships are to be established at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) to make academic career paths more plannable and more attractive.

Of the 1,000 additional tenure track (TT) professorships nationwide, the UDE is one of seven universities in the first round of approvals to have been granted more than 20 of 468 professorships. The University Alliance Ruhr (UA Ruhr) has also achieved a very good total of 54 TT professorships.

The new UDE concept to promote young scientists (WISNA) systematically integrates early career support and personnel development to offer promising young national and international researchers the best possible conditions: an excellent scientific environment combined with long-term prospects. As from 2018, the UDE will only offer junior professorships as tenure track posts.

GCPlus is a UDE Graduate Center that was established in 2017 at the Science Support Centre (SSC) and combines the initiatives and services for young scientists: For prospective doctoral candidates, doctoral candidates, postdocs and the professors supervising them, a range of information and services are provided, covering interdisciplinary training and development and funding opportunities.

The Research Academy Ruhr is a new institution that came into being last year. It is a platform for cooperation within the UA Ruhr in supporting young scientists and is developing an additional programme of qualifications at all stages of their academic career.