Applications for Japanese-German International Research Training Groups (IRTG) intended for JSPS-DFG funding are open to all subject areas covered by JSPS, and interdisciplinarity in joint projects is encouraged. An IRTG should be run by two teams of participating researchers in Japan and Germany, respectively. Each team should have approximately five to ten members with proven expertise both in the IRTG’s main research topic and in providing outstanding supervision to doctoral students. The participating researchers’ expertise at the two locations should be complementary and provide added value to the IRTG. Each team of participating researchers in an IRTG should be based at a single institution in Japan and Germany, respectively. In convincingly justified cases, an IRTG may be based in more than two institutions.
The Japanese and German teams in an IRTG should jointly formulate a high quality and coherent research and training programme to be implemented at both sites. The teams should have common research interests and objectives and these must be reflected in a common framework and joint project. Applications are submitted by the host institutions. For every IRTG, one member of the team on each side serves as spokesperson, being responsible for the proposal and the scientific coordination of the IRTG. This also includes responsibility for reporting to JSPS and DFG, respectively.
The programme should provide for regular exchanges of academic staff and doctoral students for the purposes of joint research and training. Doctoral students should spend a period of at least six months (and up to one year) in total during their PhD project at the respective partner institution for research and training and each doctoral student should have both a Japanese and a German supervisor. On the German side, approximately ten to fifteen doctoral researchers will be funded by DFG within a single IRTG in parallel.
Applications shall only be open to such consortia that establish a novel joint degree or double degree programme for the doctoral researchers between the two institutions in the framework of the IRTG.
The Japanese-German consortium will firstly need to submit a joint IRTG draft proposal simultaneously to DFG and JSPS. (For DFG, the proposal needs to be submitted by the German university.) Submission will be possible at any time without calls or deadlines, and applications are processed continuously.
