"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.

What is special about a remote group?
Well, you need to make sure from the start that the members are somewhat self-organized. There is a maximum number of students that you can effectively supervise before you need to start sub- groups. I don‘t really like the idea to have solely postdocs taking care of doctoral students and the doctoral students rarely talking to me. I still want to be involved in their projects and once I reached
8-10 people, this was getting challenging. In the corona situation, we established weekly meetings where everyone in 2-3 minutes quickly reported about their work of the last couple of days. I don’t like micromanagement, but I want everyone to be informed about the different projects.

Is this a joint two-group-meeting?
Yes, with both groups. I consider it as one group actually. I can only encourage the students to talk to each other, for example in virtual coffee meetings. I think this is very helpful for them. On many technical issues, you don’t want to talk to your professor. I also have some projects that are cross-center. So, talking to each other is important for the projects to succeed.

Do your students travel between the groups?
Yes, but not so often. When the corona numbers were better, we had one big meeting for everyone with 3G plus, etc. I want to make sure that they know each other in person and not just from screen. When I started in Jülich, I invited my entire group from KIT so that they could see the infrastructure and meet the people. I think this is also a big advantage for the students: they have access to the resources of both places.

Did the pandemic change anything at all? Well, suddenly online meetings were the only option – not just one option. Both places where I work are computing centers. So, for us the most sane and safe way was to work from home. Be- fore the pandemic, I have to admit, I was always a bit skeptical of home office – that there might be too many distractions from work. During the pandemic I saw it work. My students really did a remarkable job and we got great science done. What has really changed, though, is that you need to take care that group members are not too isolated. We work in theoretical physics, so some of them are quite introvert. There, you really need to pay attention.

So, home office works for your group?
Yes. Of course, working in a computational field makes things easier. All we do is computer work; we don’t have a lab. I myself only use ONE powerful notebook so I can always take my lab with me. Thus, some days my students are in the office and some days they are at home. I don’t track it. Nonetheless, each week, I have fixed time slots to talk to each doctoral student for about half an hour, just to discuss.

HYIG leader Anna Böhmer got a call from Bochum YIN alumna Anna Böhmer started her Helmholtz Young Investigator group ”Strain Tuning of Correlated Electronic Phases” at KIT in 2017. By 2021, she became Professor for Solid State Physics at the Ruhr-University Bochum. As her new place of activity is not part of the Helmholtz Association, she could not take her group with her – at least not the funding. Thus, she still holds a working contract over 10% at KIT managing the remaining budget and supervising her last postdoc. "Fortunately, he is quite independent and now even funds his own position," Anna Böhmer states. Nevertheless, she still works with him on joined publications and theoretical problems: "Zoom is our all-purpose weapon. I also use Slack for chatting, Overleaf for joint paper-writing, and of course your standard e-mailing." When she used to be on campus, Anna Böhmer also helped with technical problems in the lab. "This kind of support can hardly be given remotely,"
she continues,"but, thankfully, there are enough other people at KIT to help with such problems." As an experimental physicist, Anna Böhmer and her group cannot work without regular lab access. Adhering to high safety regulations, they fortunately have been able to continue their research even during the pandemic.

Thanks a lot