Child Day Care

CECAD holds a contingent of kindergarten spots at the university‘s day-care center Paramecium on campus. Paramecium provide opening hours geared to the needs of scientific researchers and day care centers which are open all year round with almost no closing periods at all.

• Find more about Paramecium here 

Furthermore, during CECAD events and also for last-minute problems with pre-arranged child care, we provide emergency care at Paramecium until 7 pm as well as a babysitter service, so that parents can take part in conferences and keep work appointments.

• Back-up service of the UoC here  
• Babysitting service of the UoC here 
• Reimbursement of private babysitters here 

CECAD Minis Family Room

Has your babysitter cancelled or is the day-care center closed and you still need to get some work done? The Family Room (room 1036, 1^st floor) is one of CECAD’s contributions to help those juggling family and career. It’s intended for use on a short-term basis when day-care facilities are closed and babysitters are not available, etc. Pregnant women and nursing mothers can also use it as a quiet room. It’s furnished with a fully equipped computer workplace, a fridge, a comfy chair, a mattress and everything that babies and toddlers need. Register with us once at the start and book the room online whenever you need is! Access is easy with the CECAD chip card. Please also check the terms of use of the family room.

Family Support Grant

CECAD promotes the reconciliation between work and private life for all members. We aim to create a friendly family work environment to particularly support parents (mothers and fathers) with young children or employees responsible for care-dependent family members (min. level-of-care I). The support can be granted for PhD students, Postdocs or Junior Group Leaders who are CECAD members or belong to a laboratory of a CECAD member. The application should be submitted at least 3 months before support is required. Please click here for further information.

• Child day care centres Cologne
• Child day care centre University of Cologne
• Child day care centre University Hospital Cologne

8 x CECAD Family Support during Covid19 Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic and measures to contain the spread of the virus have often hit families particularly hard. CECAD PhD students and postdocs who have been affected by an acute, special family stress situation, e.g. due to closed or only partially opened schools, day-care facilities or other regular care facilities, can now apply again for "CECAD family support".
With this support CECAD aims at mitigating the Corona-induced damage in the working progress of research projects for as many employees as possible by supporting up to 8 projects for 3 months each by paying a student assistant for a maximum of 10 h/week. Since the minimum contract period for student assistants is 6 months we are welcoming it if two projects share one SHK and would even encourage applicants to submit a team application (e.g. if applicants work on the same floor in one institute, work on a collaborative project or similar method skills are required.). In this case a "sharing schedule system" should be included in the application.
Please submit your application as a single pdf file to julia.zielinski@uk-koeln.de while including the aspects listed below. In a joint application points 1 to 10 should be covered individually, while question 11 can be answered jointly. Application deadline is July 3, 2020.

1.    Your first and last name
2.    Your supervisor / Principal investigator (needs to be a CECAD member)
3.    Your position
4.    Your employer (e.g. University, University Hospital, MPI)
5.    Timeframe and extent of your wished support (starting date, no. of months, hours/week of the student assistant.
       Please further answer with question 11.)
6.    Reason for your support e.g. how did the corona crisis affect the working progress of your project?
7.    How will the assistant be supervised e.g. if you are still partially absent from the lab?
8.    Short project description that will be conducted by the student assistant with a clear reference to your research project
       (the SHK must not be involved in other research projects of the lab while being payed by the "CECAD family support")
9.    Date and your signature
10.  Date and signature of your PI
11.  Sharing a student assistant: Please draft a rough schedule (e.g. 2 x 3 months, 10 h/week or 2 x 6 months including
       5 h/week/project) and name at least one advantage of these two projects sharing an assistant.