Promotion of Young Scientists and Gender Equality
The Cluster in its first phase did ground-breaking work in establishing a tenure track at the CAU, with 9 of the 13 junior professors hired through the Cluster achieving tenure in 2011. The Cluster will continue to support externally funded junior research group leaders, however, particular focus will be placed on early career researchers at the doctoral and post doctoral level.

An open graduate school, the Integrated School of Ocean Science (ISOS), has been established to enhance multidisciplinary and research oriented marine education in Kiel. ISOS ’ primary goal is to provide added value in training and research through a supervisory and mentoring framework, supplementary training, networking and financial incentives for international mobility to sharpen the PhD students scientific profile. In addition they are challenged to think beyond their discipline and take measures to improve their competiveness as researchers after a PhD.

A new focus of the Cluster will be the support of young scientists within the network of Integrated Marine Postdocs (IMAP), catering to both early postdocs and research scientists with non-permanent positions. Although combined under the term postdoc, these two groups have different levels of experience and naturally different needs for support. Creating IMAP recognizes not only the enormous potential represented by early-career scientists in the Cluster but also that fully realizing this potential for the benefit of the Cluster will often involve satisfying requirements specific to this ‘postdoc’ group.

The main aims of the IMAP network are:

• (a) attracting young researchers working in interdisciplinary marine science,
• (b) maximizing the scientific output and opportunities of postdocs and research fellows by optimizing their working environment, and
• (c) establishing a performance-based career advancement pathway for young marine scientists in Kiel.

The Cluster actively encourages the promotion of female scientists to reach high level leadership positions. Female scientists are still extremely rare in leadership positions in Germany and several measures are being taken to improve this situation. The Future Ocean gender panel will continually monitor activities with regard to gender and minority biases and advise the Cluster’s decisive bodies with the goal of improving gender literacy in all aspects of the network.