Dr Beate Scholz is director of Scholz – consulting training coaching. She has worked as strategy consultant, project facilitator and coach since 2003 (until April 2008 in addition to her position at the German Research Foundation, DFG). Her company focuses on supporting universities, research organizations and governments in designing, implementing and evaluating concepts and strategies for research career development and international research collaboration. Training and coaching of individual investigators and researchers’ teams in view of research career development issues and strategic acquisition of research funds completes the professional portfolio of Beate Scholz.
From 1997 until 2008 Beate Scholz worked for Germany’s central research funding organization, the DFG, where she headed the Research Career Strategy division, beginning in 2001. She was involved in developing Germany’s Excellence Initiative, namely the Graduate Schools Programme.
During her professional career Beate Scholz has conducted various surveys and evaluations, e.g. on behalf of the European Science Foundation’s European Alliance on Research Career Development, on the AFR Programme (funding outstanding PhD candidates and postdocs) of Luxembourg’s Fonds National de la Recherche in 2010 and on ‘Cross-border research collaboration in Europe’ on behalf of the European Heads of Research Councils and the European Science Foundation in 2009.
In addition, she has gained considerable experience as reviewer in selection panels for doctoral programmes and junior research groups on behalf of the German Helmholtz Association and two Irish Research Councils and in chairing the international management committee of the European Young Investigator Award. Moreover she is a member of the global network of experts ‘Forces & Forms of Change in Doctoral Education Worldwide’, based at the Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA. She is a demanded expert by the European Commission, where she currently serves as member and rapporteur to the Expert Group on the Research Profession.
Beate Scholz holds a PhD in Modern Italian History from the University of Trier. She studied history, political sciences and international economics at the Universities of Trier, Reading/UK and Cologne and carried out research in Italy and Austria