TMF-UiB career program

The Trond Mohn Research Foundation has supported the recruitment of young talented researchers to UiB since 2005.

The everyday working life of young group leaders in academia has changed over the past ten years and researchers are expected to learn many new skills in areas such as management, strategic thinking, project administration and ethics. Therefore, the TMF-UiB career program was established in 2019 to ensure that young research leaders recruited with support from TMF receive good project support, exchange best practice, develop as leaders and establish a strong local professional and social network so that they can develop their professional potential at UiB. After a positive evaluation in 2023 the program has started into its second funding period which will last until 2026.

The program has a steering group and a scientific advisory group and is administered by UiB. TMF participates as an observer in the steering group. The participants gather every autumn for two days outside Bergen and are offered several shorter courses and seminars at UiB throughout the year. The annual autumn gatherings have different main themes such as recruitment and personnel management, financial management, communication, and innovation.

The program also contains a mentoring scheme to support all the candidates.

“The goal is to strengthen these excellent young researchers’ career development. At the same time, we want to facilitate network-building across the university’s disciplines. This network will include both the current grantees working on their projects, and former grantees who have finished their projects and are now recruited into permanent positions at the university”, says Rector Margareth Hagen.

Hagen adds that even if the grantee group’s research covers many different academic disciplines, the new candidates have many common experiences and challenges, being granted the opportunity to build and lead their own research group at the university.

Former TMF fellow Professor Lilya Budaghyan from the Department of Informatics was satisfied with the offers on the program. She writes in her final report to the foundation that she received excellent support from the program, as she gained insight into tools to improve her leadership skills and had a platform where she could meet other TMF fellows to share experiences and encourage each other. She also highlights the help from the programme’s mentors, who are recruited from among the most successful senior researchers at UiB, where she received advice on difficult leadership issues.