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The team at Human Resources (P) is available to help with everything to do with recruiting academic and non-academic staff and assistants. They can also help you with legal issues surrounding recruitment and with claiming for travel expenses. P2 advises you with recruiting academic staff and public servants, P3 helps with recruiting part-time academic staff and P4 is available to help with employing non-academic staff.

Points of contact in P

Human Resources website

FAU offers a broad-based spectrum of programmes to support young researchers, whether they are enrolled as students, or are doctoral candidates, postdoctoral researchers, heads of junior research groups or W1 professors. Our Graduate Centre (FAU GZ) coordinates the doctoral procedure for the whole university and also oversees the introduction of new doctoral degree programmes. The digital platform ‘docDaten’ enables doctoral candidates to keep a close eye on the progress of their doctoral procedure. We also offer events and coaching as part of our FAUnext programme, with approximately 50 workshops per semester in various interdisciplinary skills as well as individual career coaching for those who have reached the postdoctoral research stage or above.

Points of contact at the Graduate Centre

Graduate Centre website

The Central Office for International Affairs and the Welcome Centre are the central ports of call at FAU for all matters relating to studying, teaching and mobility at the international level. They offer advice and information to students at FAU about going abroad. The Welcome Centre advises international students and researchers on non-academic topics such as visas, health insurance or looking for accommodation. They also offer a cultural programme aimed at international doctoral students and researchers, which family members are welcome to attend. In addition, support is available for establishing and maintaining interdisciplinary university collaborations.

International Affairs website

To encourage equality of opportunity, FAU implements strategies aimed at ensuring compatibility between studying, working and having a family as well as gender mainstreaming and diversity management strategies. The Office of Equality and Diversity is the central port of call at FAU for everything to do with equality of opportunity. Its areas of responsibility include gender mainstreaming and diversity management. The FAU and Universitätsklinikum Family Service coordinates and links the wide range of services offered to students, employees and their relatives at FAU and Universitätsklinikum Erlangen.

Office of Equality and Diversity’s website

Points of contact for matters relating to equal opportunities

FAU Family Service’s website

Points of contact at the Family Service

The Examinations Offices at the individual faculties can tell you all you need to know about current deadlines for registering for examinations. They also have all the details about changes to examination procedures due to the coronavirus pandemic.

List of Examinations Offices at FAU: pruefungsamt.fau.de

The Innovation in Learning Institute at FAU (ILI) offers services, advice and knowledge transfer in the field of digital education, and provides a range of different options for digital learning, for example the StudOn portal, electronic examinations, or courses offered by the Virtual University of Bavaria (vhb).

StudOn is FAU’s central teaching and learning platform. The platform is used to organise and manage teaching and learning processes and for holding electronic examinations. StudOn is available to all students, teaching staff and administrative staff as well as other users such as guest students, students from the Virtual University of Bavaria (vhb) and collaboration partners.

As well as using the infrastructure, they can access support and advice with incorporating virtual elements into teaching and examinations, tailored to each individual case. The services available via StudOn include technical support and adjustments, training courses, networking and access to information via the project website.

ILI website

Points of contact at ILI

• Stefanie Gerl
• Sónia Hetzner

to StudOn

Mail StudOn service

The Centre for Continuing Education in University-Level Teaching (known as FBZHL for short) is one of the central institutions at FAU and is part of the ZeLLIT (Centre for Research on Teaching and Learning, Innovation and Transfer). Located where service and research overlap, we aim to improve the quality of teaching at university and develop/evaluate measures focused on university-level teaching.

No matter whether you are a tutor or a professor, anyone who wants to improve their teaching methodology skills can benefit from the workshops, teaching consultations and shadowing we offer. We help you plan and design lectures, seminars or tutorials; design and hold effective examinations tailored to the specific skills being tested; and advise students effectively. Teaching staff who take part in our programme are awarded the Bavarian universities’ certificate in university-level teaching (Zertifikat Hochschullehre der Bayerischen Universitäten).

Thanks to the nationwide initiative Quality Pact for Teaching, we have been able to expand our services quite considerably. As well as our open seminar programme and faculty-specific services, we offer qualification programmes aimed at tutors, extra coaching sessions and publications on our blog, Infothek Lehre.

FBZHL website

Points of contact at FBZHL

• Dr. Michael Cursio
• Dr. Uwe Fahr

Teaching at FAU is on an equal footing with research. Previous teaching achievements are an important factor and are considered early on in the appointment procedure. The Executive Board of the University is very keen to encourage high-quality teaching at FAU in the long term and to promote innovation. FAU not only offers a comprehensive range of training in university-level teaching, but also programmes for the promotion and recognition of effective teaching. The University offers its own competitive internal funding programme known as the Innovationsfonds Lehre. It also offers the Teaching Award for Young Researchers at FAU in recognition of outstanding teaching achievements. Furthermore, the Vice President Education regularly provides information about other funding schemes and teaching awards. The personal assistant to the Vice President Education will give you some information on these aspects.

Information on Innovation Fund for Teaching

Overview of awards for teaching at FAU

Contact

• Esther Paulmann

The research coordinators at the individual faculties, and the teams at Research Support, and Third-party Funding and Related Legal Affairs in Research (H3) are happy to help you with applying for third-party funding. The research coordinators are mainly responsible for an initial consultation specifically for the subject in question, whilst H3 can help with administrative and legal concerns.

Dr. Sabine Eber mainly supports the Vice President Research, in matters relating to research. This includes nominations for important research prizes as well as providing support with applications for ERC grants and Alexander von Humboldt professorships. Her tasks also include coordinating the Federal Ministry of Education and Research’s female professor programme and preparing the President’s Office for DFG evaluations. She is also the project manager for the expansion of FAU’s Current Research Information System (CRIS).

Points of contact at the faculties

• Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Theology: Dr. Cordula Glass / Dr. Robert Fischer
• Faculty of Business, Economics, and Law: Dr. Dennis Kirchberg (School of Business, Economics and Society)
• Faculty of Medicine: Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Katrin Schiebel
• Faculty of Engineering: Kerstin Stoltze
• Faculty of Sciences: Patrick Stör

Points of contact at Research Support

Research Support website

Services for researchers

Points of contact at H3

• Annette Spletter
• Cosima Strantz

Website of Third-party Funding and Related Legal Affairs in Research (H3)

Point of contact for President’s Staff

• Dr. Sabine Eber

The research coordinators at the individual faculties will also guide you when applying for collaborative research projects. Research Support can help you during this process by

• Giving advice and guiding you through the entire application process
• Clarifying the various steps in the application process (e.g. guidelines, checklists)
• Pooling information gained from previous initiatives
• Providing support with the review process (e.g. trial reviews, lists of questions)

You are also, of course, given support with start-up financing for the application and checking applications and managing projects.

Research Support website

FAU’s University Library is on hand to help if you would like to publish your work via open access.

Online information from University Library on open access

Points of contact at University Library

• Markus Putnings
• Dr. Katrin Seyler

Support for all aspects of research data management is available through the FAU Competence Center for Research Data and Information (FAU CDI).

• Website: https://cdi.fau.de/
• E-mail: forschungsdaten@fau.de

FAU maintains a database for recording all publications, research achievements, projects, inventions and prizes of the scientists working at FAU, known as the FAU Current Research Information System (CRIS). You can log on with your IdM account. The CRIS user data are transferred from IdM (FAU’s identity management system) on a daily basis. This allows you to sign on via SSO (single sign on), but means that you must have an IdM user account in order to use CRIS (application and activation in IdM portal).

Researchers, professors, chairs, doctoral candidates and administrative staff outside of University Administration (ZUV) are automatically granted access to CRIS. Students cannot access the internal areas in CRIS.

Detailed information about registering in CRIS is available in the user’s guide.

Points of contact at CRIS

• E-mail adress for general enquiries
• Bastian Melsheimer
• Marcus Walther

Outreach Support coordinates all areas under the heading of outreach, and offers support in organising events, training, external collaborations, submitting applications for and managing patents and licences, as well as spin-offs and start-ups.

Outreach Support website

Alumni and event management at FAU concentrates on raising funds for Deutschlandstipendium scholarships, organising events for the whole of FAU, FAU branding and staying in touch with alumni. Raising funds for Deutschlandstipendium scholarships mainly involves approaching our partners from industry and raising awareness of the scholarship. Among the events we organise centrally for the whole of the University are image events which increase the visibility of FAU. Alumni management allows former FAU students to stay in touch with their alma mater via the free FAU alumni network (www.alumni.community.fau.de), even many years after completing their degree.

Points of contact for alumni and event management

• Christoph Loos
• Aline Looschen

Downloads

Handout for events: German | English

Handout on alumni, fundraising and advertising: German | English

Further information

Website Alumni and Event Management

Lifelong learning at FAU

FAU advocates the principle of lifelong learning. Our goal is to enable people to update, enrich and extend their knowledge at any stage in life through a structured and expanding range of professional development courses. Outreach – Continuing Education at FAU offers a range of seminars and degree programmes for working professionals, aimed at anyone interested in professional development.

Professional development: Relevant and up to date

Outreach – Continuing Education offers chairs and institutions advice and support in developing, implementing and administering continuing education measures (degree programmes, seminars, workshops etc.).

Points of contact for continuing education and FAU Academy

• Dr. Christiane Decker
• Sebastian-Manuel Schmidt

FAU Academy website

Information on continuing education at Outreach Support

FAU actively encourages members of FAU to launch a company based on their innovative research. We provide advice free of charge on all aspects of setting up a company to researchers who are preparing to launch a company (with the exception of legal and tax advice). We support start-up teams from their initial idea to drawing up a business plan to applying for specific funding programmes (e.g. Exist: www.exist.de). Even after the company has been set up, we are still on hand to help the young start-ups gain a foothold in the market, working in close collaboration with partners such as the ZOLLHOF Tech Incubator, LZE e.V. or BayStartup. FAU is currently also one of the major partners involved in setting up a new platform named ‘EXISTENCY’, aimed at funding academic start-ups in the Middle Franconia region.

Magic triangle for supporting start-ups and spin-offs at FAU

Raising awareness & qualifications: Digital Tech Academy
(Outreach Support – internal FAU service unit: dta.fau.de))

Advice and Funding: FAU consulting services for start-ups
(Outreach Support – internal FAU service unit: fau.de/outreach/gruenden/)

Incubation & networking: ZOLLHOF Tech Incubator
(ZOLLHOF Betreiber GmbH, FAU largest shareholder:zollhof.de)

External points of contact, and points of contact at Outreach Support

• Christoph Heynen, Outreach Support
• Sebastian Engel, Zollhof

Patent management at FAU is an in-house service provider for inventors, project leaders and heads of working groups, professors and chairs. Patent management is the first port of call at FAU for any questions you may have concerning the Employee Inventions Act (ArbnErfG), inventions, patent applications, trademark and design registrations, copyright and non-disclosure issues. It is therefore also the first point of contact and service provider for advice on the novelty of the invention and the degree to which it involves an inventive step; preliminary searches in freely accessible patent databases; or advice on how to apply for a patent. It acts as an interface to external patent lawyers, copyright collectives and patent authorities, and provides assistance in drawing up transfer agreements, exploitation agreements and licence agreements, as well as inter-institutional agreements (IIA) and non-disclosure agreements (CDAs/NDAs). It also provides advice on including intellectual property rights and inventions in accounts and guidance on how to distribute income arising from licences and the exploitation of inventions as well as remuneration for inventors.

 Further information on patents and licences

Information on FAU’s intellectual property (IP) policy

Points of contact for Patent Management

• Dr. Marco Mank
• Martin Golze

Outreach – Knowledge and Technology Transfer (WTT) initiates and supports collaboration between the University and companies/institutions:
For companies, it is the first port of call if they wish to access expertise at the University. For chairs and consultants, it acts as a partner for all issues relating to contracts, and is involved in administrative and financial project management for commissioned research at FAU.

Points of contact at Outreach Support

• Sybille Barth

Information about the collaborative programme EELISA at FAU