What are you working on?
I am in the area of early embryonic development. More precisely, I am dealing with the process of implantation of the embryo in the Uterus, a developing step, of the beats for thirty percent of all human pregnancies to fail. We are only just beginning to understand the underlying mechanisms.
As the eruption of the Corona epidemic has influenced your work?
He threw it on the pile. Our lab had to close, and we had to kill almost all of our mice we use as a model organism. Now the labs to do it again, but before we can start our research again, we need to breed our mouse lines high. What lasts for approximately three months. My research, therefore, is thrown around six months back.
The sounds dramatically. How is your funding?
I am Marie Sk?odowska-Curie fellow of the European training network Image-In-Life, which is funded by the EU Horizon 2020 Grant. Since my doctoral work is three years, running from my scholarship in December. I run five different projects, all of which illuminate a different part of the process of implantation. Due to the Lockdown and the associated delays, it is impossible for me, my projects until December to finish.
What were you told, as you have asked for a renewal of your scholarship?
it was not possible to obtain a paid-for extension of the scholarship, and that is also not an emergency pot would be established, in which young researchers to transition scholarships to finish their research. There is no precedent, I was told. As a result, I filed a formal complaint with the Ombudsman of the EU and an open letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote in which I ask you to be a paid extension of all EU-funded PhD fellowships to three to six months. I published the letter on Twitter and Facebook and was able to determine that I am not an isolated case, but that many of the PhD students in Europe just the same as me. I received letters from PhD students from Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, France, Spain and the UK, the insured, all that you have the same Problem.
the result was something like a solidarity movement between European PhD students?
at Least I was able to collect in an anonymous Online Petition already has several hundred signatures. At the same time be shy, but also a lot to write, because you fear, only then to get right no support any longer, or because they think that we will not be heard by the policy anyway. the
you Would be in a different situation, if you had a German or British scholarship?
All the scholarships that are awarded by British foundations, were extended for six months, in Germany various foundations have extended their scholarship also. Many other European countries have introduced, to my knowledge, to programs, to help their fellows. However, as an EU scholarship holders, we are sitting between all chairs.
