Funding for young scientists

Start-up funding through centralized research funds

The Faculty of Psychology provides funding for the start-up financing of pilot studies and intended third-party funding applications for employees with a doctorate or diploma and employees with a master's degree who are aiming for a doctorate. This funding is intended to directly support the personal career or further qualification of the applicant. Therefore, it must be made clear in the application to what extent the requested study will contribute to the applicant's own further qualification.

Industrial projects will not be funded.
Likewise, double funding of projects is to be excluded. If the applicant is involved in a project that is already funded elsewhere or for which funding from elsewhere is in prospect, the application for faculty funding should clearly emphasize the extent to which the use of faculty funds can be distinguished from the use of funds from elsewhere in terms of content and funding. The origin of the other funds (DFG, friends and sponsors, faculty, foundation, etc.) is irrelevant.

A maximum of 10,000 EUR is available annually for the entire faculty. In recent years, the volume of applications has greatly exceeded the funds available, so that partial funding of the projects applied for is likely.

Eligibility to apply

Eligible to apply are staff members who are employed in the Faculty of Psychology of the TUD or in externally funded projects, as well as doctoral students in psychology.

In principle, each project can only be funded once. However, each employee can apply for funding repeatedly.

An application for a new study is possible even if a previously approved study has not yet been completed. Accordingly, the status report (progress report) of the ongoing study must be available.

Notes on the use of centralized research funds

* Approved funds cannot be reallocated.

* If the study cannot be implemented as planned, this must be reported to the funds allocation committee and the funds must be returned. A new application with justified changes may be submitted for reconsideration in the next funding period.

* An ethics vote on the requested study must be available at the time of application if the study requires an ethics application according to good scientific practice. If the ethics vote is not yet available but an application has been submitted to the Ethics Committee, an application for start-up funding may still be submitted. Information on the status of the ethics vote must be mentioned in the application. In case of approval (full or partial) of the application for start-up funding, this is only conditional. The ethics vote is to be submitted to the funding commission by 01.05. of the same year. If there is no positive decision by the ethics committee, the start-up funding monies will not be disbursed as the study cannot be conducted as requested.

Eligible in-kind funds are:

• Trial subject funds (please use receipt list).
• The base rate for all requested funds is 8 Euros per hour per subject. Higher compensation for test persons must be specifically justified. If no justification is given, only 8 Euros per hour of test person allowance will be granted in case of approval.   

Special cases can be for example:
    - Special sample (no students, patient sample ..)
    - Special examinations (MRI, EEG, experiments with blood sampling ..)

• In well justified exceptional cases, incentives in the form of vouchers can be applied for as subject compensation instead of subject fees. The scope must be planned proportionally. This may be the case, for example, if additional incentives have to be created within a specific research area, and the incentives are thus part of the research question. The same applies to special groups of persons as investigated.
• Consumables, i.e., materials needed only for the study applied for (e.g., disposable electrodes, etc.).

Conditionally eligible supplies are:

• Software
• External services that have to be obtained for the requested study (e.g. neurophysiological reports for MRI examinations)
• Contracts for work and services for the creation of a work that cannot be used later for commercial purposes (e.g., programming of a special software program)

Generally not eligible for funding are:

• Materials that can be covered by the basic equipment of the professorships (e.g. EDP devices, EDP accessories, office supplies)
• Materials that can be reused across projects and in the long term (general software)
• Student assistants
• Postal charges
• Travel expenses, attendance of congresses

Application mode

• An application for allocation of research funds must be submitted annually to the Faculty Appropriations Committee by April 1. Date for a possible 2nd round of applications (if funds are left in the same year) would be October 1. Applications received after this date cannot be considered. The addressees are the members of the Appropriations Committee (Petra Kemter-Hofmann, Judith Schäfer, and Caroline Surrey).
• These proposals should follow the DFG proposal structure (maximum 3 pages, without references); if the proposal is too long or deviates from the proposal structure described below, it may be rejected. Proposals should meet the basic outline of a scientific proposal. For detailed proposal structure, see below.
• The fund allocation committee develops a recommendation for the Faculty Council's decision to allocate funds. The Faculty Council makes the decision on the award. Applicants are therefore encouraged to refrain from contacting the Appropriations Committee regarding their application.
• A report on the use of the allocation must be made to the Faculty Council no later than one year later (by March 31, date for the 2nd round of applications would be September 30). The report is in the form of a 1 to max. 2 page progress report including a statement of how the funds have been used. Without submission of this progress report (by mail to the members of the allocation committee), renewed funding is excluded for 3 years. After project completion, the final report must be submitted. In addition, unused remaining funds must be reported and indicated in the final report. These will be booked back accordingly so that they are available for further studies.

In addition, a presentation of the results to the faculty is desired (e.g., Faculty Colloquium, Faculty Council Meeting, Young-Scientist Lecture). If the project is not completed by 03/31 or 09/30, the research progress report must still be submitted.

Application structure to be considered

We ask applicants to use the following form for the application: APPLICATION template

• Subject
• Name and position of the applicant
• Substantive justification of the application
  • Project goal
  • Status of research
  • How does the project fit into the applicant's own research activities?
  • To what extent does the proposed study contribute to the applicant's own further qualification?
  • Can the project be integrated into higher-level projects/the work of the chair?
• Goals and work program
•  Application volume
  • Financial
  • Type of funds
  • The type and amount of funds requested must be justified in a comprehensible manner: E.g., when applying for subject funds, a statement of the location, duration, frequency, and specifics of the study, as well as the number and composition (students, patients, etc.) of the subjects is expected, as well as, in the case of consumables, an explanation of why these cannot be financed from professorship funds (e.g., in the case of EEG paste: chair does not have its own EEG lab). In addition, it must be stated whether partial funding of the project is approved in principle and how high the minimum funding amount would have to be in order to contribute meaningfully to the success of the proposed project.
• Literature on relevant prior work by the applicant and the state of research in the field.

Guidelines for preparing the progress report

We request that applicants use the following form for the progress or final report: REPORT template

Length: 1-2 pages

Deadline: 31.3. of the following year after application approval, date for the 2nd application round would be 30. September

• Objectives of the project - initial questions and objectives of the project
• Status of implementation
  Work performed to date, including deviations from the original concept, scientific failures, if any, problems in project organization or technical implementation
• (Interim) results and discussion
  Presentation of the results achieved and discussion with regard to the relevant state of research, possible application perspectives and conceivable follow-up investigations (e.g. do results lead to a DFG application?)
• Utilization of the results
  e.g. previous conference contributions (posters, lectures), manuscripts, publications, diploma, bachelor, master theses
• Use of funds
  List of the funds used

Procedure of allocation

The grantee will receive a named allocation on the professorship's cost center after the faculty receives the annual allocation of budgetary funds. A record of the use of the funds must be maintained within the cost center. Funds must be expended by the end of the budget year.

Note on Open Science

The Appropriations Committee explicitly supports good scientific practice and therefore draws attention at this point to the Open Science Initiative of the Psychology Department at TUD. We find that the application for start-up funding already forms a very good basis for pre-registration and would like to motivate to pre-register the applied studies according to the open science practices if possible. If you need advice, the OSIP contact persons (Prof. Dr. Stefan Scherbaum) will support you. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the representatives of the funding commission.