JICE ECR Fellowships

The Joint Institute for Individualisation in a Changing Environment (JICE) offers fellowships for outstanding Early Career Researchers (ECRs) from around the world who are establishing their own independent research profile. The ECR Fellowships are intended to enable them to develop long-term research collaborations on causes, mechanisms or consequences of individualisation within the interdisciplinary research environment of the JICE.

The funding will be granted for remote or on-site fellowships at Bielefeld University or the University of Münster for up to six months in 2025.

What is provided?

Depending on the format of the fellowship, ECR Fellows may benefit from:

• funding of travel and accommodation
• a monthly stipend of up to 1,500 € to cover additional expenses
• a workspace at Bielefeld University or the University of Münster
• integration into an inspiring interdisciplinary research environment focused on individualisation research
• administrative support for the organisation of the stay

How to apply?

Applications are currently not being accepted. We will inform you here when applications are accepted again.

Contact

For further information:
Dr. Tobias Zimmermann
Scientific Coordinator
contact@jice.info

Current JICE ECR Fellows

• Kai-Philipp Gladow (Behavioural Ecology)

  

  Dr Kai-Philipp Gladow’s primary research interest lies in understanding how species interactions promote or hinder coexistence. For his doctorate, he examined how various birds of prey, namely eagle owls, goshawks, common buzzards and red kites, influence each other’s behaviour and breeding performance through intraguild predation, i.e. the killing of individuals belonging to a competing species with similar ecological niches. During his ECR Fellowship, he will expand upon this work by incorporating individual-level behavioural variation into models of intraguild predator systems – in this way, he will integrate theoretical approaches and advance ecological models of species coexistence. This will address a critical gap in classical coexistence theory, which often overlooks individualisation as a key driver of interaction dynamics. The work has direct implications for biodiversity conservation, helping to predict how ecological communities might respond to environmental change and increasing anthropogenic pressures.

• Eric Grunenberg (Personality Psychology)

  

  Eric Grunenberg’s research agenda involves integrating theoretical advances from social and personality psychology with novel machine learning approaches to predict, explain and implement changes in social decision-making. During his ECR Fellowship, he will conclude a research project investigating behavioural factors that influence how humans choose their romantic partners in large-scale speed dating scenarios. The study combines distal self-report data and observable behaviour to clarify when unique partner choices become predictable. Beyond this, it will provide a methodological showcase of a novel computational modelling approach for uncovering cues that make certain individuals “click” with each other. By identifying the behaviours and conditions under which individual partner choices arise, the findings will advance our understanding of how and why individuals select their social relationships.

• Reshma R (Evolutionary Biology)

  

  Dr Reshma R’s research focuses on the causes and consequences of individual variation in phenotypic traits and how these contribute to the adaptation of populations to rapid environmental changes. As part of her doctorate, she investigated the role of evolutionary capacitance in facilitating faster adaptation by enabling populations to store sufficient variation in the form of cryptic genetic variation and release it during stressful conditions. As a part of this, she extensively documented individual variation in circadian activity rhythms in red flour beetles (Tribolium castaneum). During her ECR Fellowship, she will examine individual differences in potential trade-offs between activity rhythms and life-history traits in beetles.

• Maria Luigia Vommaro (Ecotoxicology)

  

  During her ECR Fellowship, Dr Maria Luigia Vommaro will conduct a research project entitled ’Individualisation in Ecotoxicology’, which explores how intrinsic individual traits mediate ecological responses to environmental stressors such as pesticides and heatwaves. She will use the two established invertebrate models Tenebrio molitor and Tribolium castaneum to gain insights into the mechanisms determining insect resilience to such environmental conditions at an individual level. By integrating biological, toxicological, statistical, and ecological perspectives, she seeks to achieve three main objectives: (1) describing individual differences in stress responses, (2) explaining how these differences arise through physiological and immunological mechanisms and (3) predicting variation in ecological resilience using trait-based modeling.

Former JICE ECR Fellows

• Jingyu Qiu (Behavioural Ecology)

  

  Dr Jingyu Qiu’s research focuses on individual differences in life histories as well as behavioural and physiological traits and how these interact with the environment. For her doctorate, she studied wild Karoo bush rats (Otomys unisulcatus), revealing that ecological constraints during early life stages can lead to divergence in life histories and have long-term consequences in adulthood. Building on this foundation, she will develop a research project during her ECR Fellowship to investigate how individuals cope with human-induced information pressure in the context of urbanisation. This will address three key questions: (1) whether personality predicts individual performance under information pressure, (2) how personality interacts with different types of information pressure and (3) how urbanisation influences information-processing ability at the population level in the wild.