"I knew Zoom before Corona"

YIN alumni share their experiences on how to remotely lead a Helmholtz group

Helmholtz Young Investigator Groups (HYIGs) allow young postdocs to independently build up a research group at a Helmholtz center of their choice. The prospect comes together with a tenure track "light" – offering a permanent sci- entist position after positive evaluation, but not a professorship. Thus, it happens that HYIG leaders change institutions while the Helmholtz groups are still running. As the groups are bound to a Helmholtz center, remote leadership is often the only practical solution to continue the group.

YIN alumnus Alexander Schug and his group focus on questions of theoretical biophysics and material science related to machine learning – mostly on the molecular level. For example, they generate molecular dynamics simulations of biostructures and biomolecules. Alexander Schug started his HYIG at KIT in 2011 with a seed funding of about 1.5 million euros. After his evaluation in 2016, he got a permanent position as senior scientist at KIT.

Alex, you, then, got an offer from Jülich!?
I got the offer from the Research Center in Jülich to head a research group at the Neumann Institute for Computing – a temporary group with excellent funding. For me it was very attractive to get the chance to work at the supercomputer in Jülich. Since, it is a temporary position, I negotiated to keep my group at KIT. This is how I ended up having basically two groups in parallel. My main group is at the Research Center Jülich, but I still had about 5 doctoral students at KIT. So, you ran your KIT group remotely? Yes, but remotely still means that I was traveling quite a bit. I think one of the most important points is that you keep in touch with your students and I met my students at KIT regularly. My family lives in Karlsruhe and, thus, I am here at the weekends anyway. I also have an apartment in Jülich where I stay during the week.

What about tools for online communication?
Back in the day, I already used video tools. In fact, I knew Zoom before Corona. But I did not use it as frequently as I do now. Instead, I really tried to meet my students in person as much as possible. In my view, the most productive discussions are still those in front of a real chalk board.

Do you use any other online tools?
We use Overleaf for article writing, github for sharing software codes, and cloud storage such as bwSync&Share to exchange documents. We did try other tools, but nothing really added much. In the end, I am still an old fashioned pen and paper person and like to talk sitting in the same room. A big advantage of physical presence is that students can just walk in. To talk via zoom, you always have an organizational overhead to set up the meeting.

excursus YIN hopes for New Work at KIT
In a global and digitalized society, alternative concepts of work and working together are continuously developing. With the Covid pandemic, however, almost everything changed over night: Home became the new office, work was scheduled around family hours, and video conferences regularly took up the whole network capacities. For YIN members, the productivity of research depended decisively on the degree of theoretical versus experimental work: Do you have your lab on a laptop or your laptop in the lab? Accordingly, also the preferences for tele work vary. While more flexibility was generally appreciated, especially the hiring process of new staff was quite difficult to accomplish.