Associate Professor Katja Anttila, Department of Biology
I was one of the “lucky ones” getting a Junior Group Leader position in Collegium of Science and Medicine in 2016. I say “lucky one” since there were 166 applicants and six of them got position. The competition of positions and grants has been “shadowing” the life of researchers for decades but as the pace of life seems to come more and more hectic, the competition comes harder and harder. Collegium, however, offers extremely nice opportunity (for those lucky ones that get the position) to start an independent scientific career. Those who got the position in call 2016 got a position for 3 years which gives time to start establishing your own research group and develop a career as independent researcher. Collegium also offered 20,000€ as research grant that could be used for material and travel costs and also for paying small working grants for students. Even though this extra grant might seem a small sum as compared to e.g. ERC, Academy of Finland or Tekes grants, it actually also makes a difference. To be independent you cannot rely anymore for your supervisor’s grants and building e.g. a lab requires funding. The extremely good thing in University of Turku is that most of the expensive equipment are bought centrally so actually the expenses are not that huge to start your work and even a small sum could really help. If you get your lab running fast (e.g. my collogues from abroad really have had to build whole lab all the way from the beginning which could take easily a year) you could get students working with you and you really start the group and you could spend whole three years leading a group not just doing science by yourself.
