15 14 Director‘s Report Structure Structure Director‘s Report information regarding financial aid earmarked for the promotion of women in academic careers is distributed at all levels. Clearly, the support of young female scientists is a crosssectional task for both ACP and the University. It creates and secures conditions of equal opportunity for all its members, independent of gender and background. PUBLICATIONS AND DISTINGUISHMENTS Publications are the main channels of scientific output, but they also serve to generate public awareness and are thus a primary performance indicator, both for the Center’s scientific excellence and its visibility. Since ACP was officially founded in late 2010, a regular output of about 400 peer-reviewed publications p.a. has been measured, and a significant rise of high-impact papers was achieved. This rise is mainly attributed to two factors: First, a number of large-scale projects in the optical sciences and adjacent fields led by the ACP principal scientists were put into operation a few years ago. Second, the institutionalization of the profile line LIGHT by the ACP, its key player, has attracted more and more international researchers of the Friedrich Schiller University to the optical sciences. These additional scientists have fused their complementary expertise into combined research efforts in a synergetic way - this fact is also reflected by the recent rise in publication numbers. By November 2023, more than 340 high-impact publications, marked as ACP research highlights, have been published by ACP principal scientists, and at least 124 of them were issued by the Nature Publishing Group (Nature, Nature Photonics, Nature Materials, etc.). Among the particularly outstanding achievements are the prices and distinguishments, which the Center’s members have been awarded in recent years. Just to name a few, the Federal German President‘s Award for Innovation in Science and Technology was awarded to a team around Stefan Nolte, for their contribution in transferring fundamental research of ultrafast laser processes into an industrial manufacturing tool. The prestigious ERC Grants (Starting, Consolidator and Advanced) were awarded to ACP principial scientists Benjamin Dietzek-Ivanšić, Christian Eggeling, Stefanie Gräfe, Jens Limpert (three times), Andreas Tünnermann, Andrey Turchanin, Ullrich Schubert, Thomas Stöhlker and Lothar Wondraczek. Only for the second time in its longstanding history since 1957, the Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award was given to a non-American individual, Jürgen Popp for his outstanding contributions to the field of applied spectroscopy. This list may be well continued, and ACP scientists will strive to do so. EQUAL GENDER OPPORTUNITIES AND FAMILY-FRIENDLINESS ACP strongly and actively pursues gender mainstreaming and family-friendly working conditions. In addition to ACP internal initiatives, a variety of measures at the federal state, local state and municipal level are already in place to promote equal gender opportunities. While gender equality is less an issue in the departments of biology and medicine, there is still – despite all efforts – a severe problem in the current staffing of physics and chemistry departments which reflects the acute shortage of women in these disciplines in Germany in general, and optics and photonics in particular. Currently, eight out of 57 ACP principal scientists are female, namely Delia Brauer, Maria Chernysheva, Stefanie Gräfe, Erika Kothe, Ute Neugebauer, Heidemarie Schmidt, Isabelle Staude and Adriana Szeghalmi. As part of our institutional strategy, women are strongly encouraged and supported in many respects to achieve group leaderships, junior and full professorships. Moreover, we have demonstrated that the long-term issue can be systematically addressed by supporting women at the earlier stages of their academic careers, incorporating this principle in all aspects of ACP’s qualification strategy. In fact, first successes of these efforts can be seen by quantitative indicators at the early-stage academic levels, demonstrating that the coordinated programs at ACP and ASP exhibit a noticeable percentage of women. In November 2023, 31% of all enrolled or graduated students in the ASP Master’s degree program were women, and the percentage of women enrolled in the ASP doctoral program is 30%, with a solid trend of increase. In particular, the competitive support instruments which aim to maximally link doctoral researcher and postdoctoral career stages are considered as optimally designed for promoting gender equality and for balancing structural disadvantages for female candidates. For two prominent cases, our gender equality measures on the junior level have proven to be fruitful. In 2015, former ACP member Rachel Grange was appointed as a professor at ETH Zurich. Following this model, the previous ACP junior research group leader Isabelle Staude was appointed as a full professor at Friedrich Schiller University Jena in 2020. While we will continue to increase our efforts on gender equality, we hope that our already demonstrated success cases will act as a seed for further appointments of female professors in the future. To further promote equal opportunity and family-friendly conditions, ACP has appointed its director Stefanie Gräfe as contact person for gender issues. She provides advice and support for equal opportunity or familyrelated topics within ACP and ASP. On the administrative level, Optics and photonics publications by ACP principal scientists according to ISI Web of Science, since 2011. To reflect the dynamics in recent years and to allow for a fair comparison, the numbers take into account the peer-review publications in optics, photonics and related fields for all ACP members since the start of their affiliation with the Friedrich Schiller University. ACP’s new infrastructure, a research and teaching building with more than 2,600 m2 of laboratory and office spaces for research and teaching was taken into operation in 2016. Since then, the building, its students and scientists have jointly evoked a great impact on the scientific excellence in the whole Jena region, in many respects. The construction has been funded by the State of Thuringia and the German federal government with 26 million Euro.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTI3Njg=