In focus: Scientific career development

Workshop “Competence development for a successful scientific career” at GMDS 2025

Our employees Dr. Brita Sedlmayr and Anne Seim were represented at the GMDS Annual Meeting 2025 with a workshop on the topic of “Competence development for a successful scientific career.”

The aim of the event was to support students and early-career scientists in reflecting on and further developing their individual competence profiles and strategically aligning them with their own career planning.

Scientific careers are diverse and lead not only to research and teaching, but also to leadership positions in business, politics, and society. In addition to professional excellence, personal, social, communicative, and methodological skills play a central role in success. These were the focus of the three-hour workshop.

The participants first received an overview of various career paths and competency requirements in a keynote speech. This was followed by an interactive World Café, in which key areas of competence were discussed and further developed in small groups.

This was supplemented by a phase of individual competency reflection, in which participants were able to systematically identify their personal strengths and areas for development with the help of a competency sheet.

A particular highlight was the concluding panel discussion with scientists at different stages of their careers. Prof. Dr. Martin Sedlmayr andKatharina Schuler provided support on behalf of the chair. Jannik Schaaf (junior professor) traveled from Frankfurt and Judith Wodke (NWG director of MeDax) joined from Greifswald. The guests provided exciting insights into their individual careers and shared practical recommendations on topics such as time management, work-life balance, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

We would like to thank all participants for their great commitment, as well as our panel guests and moderators for their valuable contributions. The workshop once again demonstrated how important it is for young scientists to exchange ideas about career paths and skills development, and how much the community benefits from joint discussions.