Research Assistant Funding

REaCh aims to actively support Early Career Researchers with caregiving responsibilities in balancing their academic careers with family- or care-related obligations and is therefore announcing a call for applications for Research Assistant Funding. This funding program is initially being offered as a pilot initiative for a limited period. The deadline for applications is August 25, 2026. Should funding remain available after the application deadline, REaCh reserves the right to extend the call and accept additional applications. Any such extension will be announced separately.

Target group

Eligible applicants are REaCh members who are working at the RPTU as Early Career Researchers (staff and fellows, e.g., doctoral candidates, postdocs, junior professors, leaders of junior research groups) and who have caregiving responsibilities. This includes, in particular, researchers with responsibility for children or family members in need of care.

Purpose and type of funding

The purpose of this funding is to provide short-term, needs-based support for research and academic activities in order to promote applicants‘ academic qualification and career development. The funding is intended in particular for researchers who, due to their caregiving responsibilities, are temporarily facing an increased personal or professional workload and therefore require additional support to continue their research activities. Such situations may arise, for example, due to changes in childcare or caregiving arrangements, transitional phases in balancing family and work, or particularly demanding periods of academic qualification and career development. Funding may be used both to directly support research projects and to provide temporary support in other areas of responsibility, particularly in teaching, provided that this creates additional capacity for research-related activities.

Funding is provided for temporary support measures that enable applicants to focus more fully on their research activities, such as:

• The employment of student and research assistants to support research activities, either through new hires or a temporary increase in working hours for assistants already employed within the research group or professorship;
• Technical or digital support tools intended for temporary use (e.g., software licenses, access to AI and language models, cloud and computing resources, as well as project-related IT services and technical support);
• Other suitable measures that provide temporary workload relief.

Funding will generally be provided for a period of up to four months. All funded measures must be completed by December 31, 2026 (in justified exceptional cases, costs may be incurred after December 31, 2026; however, this requires prior individual review and approval. The majority of the funded measure must be carried out in 2026.). The scope and duration of the measure can be flexibly adjusted to meet specific needs within the limits of the maximum amount of funding. Applicants may request funding of up to €1,500 per person.