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As already indicated in a previous post, we are moving. Tim – who was working here as a full professor at the department of mathematics at Kyushu University decided to accept a position as an associate professor at the Technical University of Munich. <\/p>\n
Me, who had a 2 years position as a visiting assistant professor at the same department accepted now a 6 months position as a “Wimi” (short form for wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter – scientific assistant) at the department of physics at the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. I will supervise the exercises for the quantum computing lecture of professor Matthias Christandl next semester. After that I am not sure. <\/p>\n
In Germany it is very uncommon to hire couples at the same department. In fact – when once applying together for two jobs at a math department in Germany – we were explicitly told that it was undesired to have a married couple at the department, as a married couple would disturb the subtle balances within the organisatorial frame work. There are few exceptions though. <\/p>\n
Luckily in Japan this was different. So the decision to leave was not easy and there were various complicated reasons for accepting a “lower rank” position. In principle we would have liked to stay longer at Kyushu University. <\/p>\n
Colleagues over here had the idea of establishing a “faculty exchange”, i.e. faculty from partner universities would come and teach for a semester. This means that one could go on a longer term visit at a university without necessarily taking off on a sabbatical (which is usually not so often possible). Plus students may have the opportunity to listen to courses, which are usually not offered. I could imagine that this exists already somewhere, but I don’t know about any example of that kind.<\/p>\n
Given the corresponding teaching load is not too heavy this would also allow for much easier collaboration on a joint work. Sofar people usually need either to use a sabbatical for that purpose, or they apply for something like the Oberwolfach program “research in pairs” or they try to be at the same conferences. <\/p>\n
Allowing for a lower teaching load seems to be more costly at first sight, however in the long run one could imagine that this solution may even be cheaper since people are not anymore so much dependent on conference hopping. <\/p>\n
Of course there is always a bit of a danger that people like it much better at the other university and just stay there, but if they are in principle content with their home university this danger seems to be not necessarily bigger as it would be without the exchange. In particular people might even be more than happy to return after their semester at a foreign university.<\/p>\n
A positive side effect of such exchanges may be that any such trip provides so many new impressions, that a lot of people maybe travel less far in their vacation time, which would lead to a better carbon foorprint in academia. Experience would tell.<\/p>\n