Dear Mentor:
You have been redirected to our Privacy Policy, because you should familiarize yourself with how we process and store your personal data before deciding whether you will grant us consent to store and process your data.
The following explanations and questions seeking your consent are in line with the data protection practices in the European Union that are binding for Global Talent Mentoring. They apply for all mentors and mentees (the participants) involved in Global Talent Mentoring. Everybody participating in Global Talent Mentoring needs to consent to the Privacy Policy first.
If you have any questions about our privacy policy and the consent we seek, please contact Mr. Matthias Mader (matthias.mader@globaltalentmentoring.org).
Our Definition of Data
Personal Data include all the information we collect about you for Global Talent Mentoring. They are created and collected as you use the mentoring platform; they include the data you shared with us during the application process; and they include any additional information you share with us, for example, if you communicate via email with us. This includes data we store about you (e.g., reports, achievements) as well. When you read about “data” or “information” in the following text, it includes all manner of data, including your personal data. While the focus in the privacy policy is on your own personal data, please be aware that we also collect data you provide about other individuals and institutions (i.e., third-party data).
How and Why We Store and Process Your Personal Data
We will save and process all the information you provide while using the mentoring platform or communicating with us off the platform (e.g., via email). This includes information about yourself, your background, your achievements, your knowledge, your ideas and views, your participation in Global Talent Mentoring, and the people and institutions you name when communicating with others on the mentoring platform. Additionally, it includes technical information related to the devices you are using to access the mentoring platform. Moreover, it also includes the data you shared with us during the application process, too.
We will use the information you provide to (a) facilitate your mentoring and networking experiences on the platform, (b) ensure effective mentoring and networking and adherence to our Code of Conduct, and (c) carry out ongoing research into effective mentoring, networking, and talent development in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and the medical sciences (STEMM). Furthermore, we will use the technical information we collect to ensure proper operation of the mentoring platform from a technical standpoint. We will now describe each of these uses in more detail.
Facilitating Your Mentoring and Networking Experience.
To this end, the platform provides participants with a series of tools and features for recording data and sharing it. These currently include the following: text messaging, audio and video messaging, real-time video and audio chat, user profiles, program representative communication, questionnaires and conversations with program representatives about the mentoring experience, forums, tools for setting goals and tasks and working on these individually and collaboratively. Some of the data you share via these tools and features will be shared automatically with all participants. In some cases, you can decide which participants see your data. The data will be displayed on the platform as long as you are a participant. When you no longer participate, most of your data will no longer be visible. Your contributions to forums will be kept, but your name will be replaced with a pseudonym on your posts. Data collected for facilitating your mentoring and networking experience will not be shared beyond the platform without first seeking your permission in writing, with the exception of the unusual cases described below.
Ensuring Effective Mentoring and Networking and Adherence to Our Code of Conduct.
To this end, program representatives will monitor all of the data you enter into the platform. Program representatives may contact you and other participants based on the information you are providing on the platform. In some cases, program representatives may also contact other program participants about data provided by you via the platform, for example, when helping to improve communication between mentees and mentors or within groups of participants on the platform. To facilitate the work of the program representatives, all the information you provide to the platform will be saved (including video and audio chat) until five years after your active participation has stopped and your Global Talent Mentoring account has been deactivated. Global Talent Mentoring will only share data you provide with sources beyond the mentoring platform without first asking for your permission in special cases. Should we suspect illegal behavior on the platform or have concerns about the safety of participants (e.g., in situations involving potential sexual abuse, sexual harassment, blackmail, intellectual property theft), we may share data about or provided by you with the competent law enforcement authorities in the Federal Republic of Germany, but always according to all applicable laws.
Carrying out Ongoing Research Into Effective Mentoring, Networking, and Talent Development in STEMM.
To this end, we will use data you provided when you applied as a mentee or mentor, the data you generate using the platform while participating, and the data that program representatives collect when interacting with you as you participate in Global Talent Mentoring. Learning about your mentoring, networking, and talent development activities in STEMM is an essential part of this research, because this is the focus of the program. The research is essential for ensuring a high-quality educational service. This will also include technical data about how you interact with the application platform (e.g., the time you spend on individual platform pages). For our research, we will store and process your data in a pseudonymized form only. This means that we store and process your data in a manner that hinders others from identifying you personally (i.e., directly or indirectly connecting the data about you with your name or contact information). Without our cooperation, pseudonymized data used in our research cannot normally be traced back to you. We point out, however, that technical measures currently unbeknownst to us could exist or arise in the future that make it possible for others to trace pseudonymized data back to you without our cooperation. Pseudonymized data about you may be viewed by researchers at the University of Regensburg and by collaborating researchers working at similar institutions located within the European Union (EU), Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland, and other countries for which the European Commission has determined via a valid “adequacy decision” (as defined and explained in article 45, paragraphs 1–9 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation, hereinafter “GDPR”) that such countries offer a sufficient level of protection of personal data. We will store your pseudonymized research-relevant data for as long as research in relation to Global Talent Mentoring is being conducted. As we hope to follow those who participate in Global Talent Mentoring over their lifespans, we may maintain these data for a very long time. However, we will review the necessity of using your data for research at least once every ten years and delete the data if they are no longer necessary for our research.
To ensure proper operation of the application platform and rectify technical problems, we will keep track of the IP addresses associated with the devices on which you log into our mentoring platform, the dates and times when you are logged into the mentoring platform, the parts of the mentoring platform you visit, information about the browsers and operating systems you are using, and the HTTP status requests and status codes.
As you participate in Global Talent Mentoring, we will not ask you to provide any special categories of personal data. In the European Union (according to article 9, paragraph 1 of the GDPR), special categories of personal data include data with information about your biometrics, genetics, race, ethnicity, physical or mental health, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union affiliation, or sexual preferences. Please be aware, however, that you might choose to share special categories of personal data as you use the mentoring platform. Those data, too, will be used to the ends described above. We will not share this information with others outside of the mentoring platform, other than in the exceptional cases noted above. However, we cannot guarantee that all such information (should you provide any) will be fully masked when we use your data for our research. Due to this possibility, we point out that the consent you grant us also applies to special categories of personal data, should you share any special categories of personal data with us.
Expansion of Program Team to Dubai.
Global Talent Mentoring was conceptualized and created by a team of researchers at the University of Regensburg lead by Prof. Dr. Heidrun Stoeger during a four-year research program (2017–2021) sponsored by the Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation for Distinguished Academic Performance in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The Hamdan Foundation is owner of the resulting mentoring program. For the period 2021–2024, researcher teams at the University of Regensburg, led by Prof. Dr. Heidrun Stoeger, and at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany), led by Prof. Drs. Albert Ziegler, have been tasked by the Hamdan Foundation with operating and improving the program and providing representatives of the Hamdan Foundation with in-depth training on how to operate Global Talent Mentoring as a best-practice, research-based online mentoring program. To this end, your personal data will be shared with team members at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, in Nuremberg, Germany, and with representatives of the Hamdan Foundation, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). This sharing can include all of the personal data you have shared with Global Talent Mentoring since your first contact with the program or since you were nominated via all communications channels on and off the platform. The University of Regensburg will continue to be the Data Controller until 31 October 2024. We can only share your personal data with team members in Dubai after you have granted us your express consent to do so. Until 31 October 2024, all team members in Regensburg, Nuremberg, and Dubai will adhere to the same data-protection and data-privacy measures in line with European data-privacy regulations (GDPR). However, it is important that you understand that the employees with access to your personal data in Dubai are subject to the laws and regulations of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), not of the European Union. The European Commission has not yet determined whether the legal provisions regarding data protection in the UAE provide an adequate level of protection for your personal data. Despite the efforts we are taking to ensure that your personal data are treated the same in Dubai as they are in the European Union, the level of protection for your personal data ensured by the UAE may be lower than the level assured by the European Union. There is therefore a risk that public or private institutions in the UAE could access your data even though such access would not be permissible according to EU data-privacy law. Furthermore, it is possible that you could have fewer or less effective data-subject rights in the UAE or that you will not have recourse to an independent supervisory agency in the UAE that could support you in exercising your rights. If you do not consent to the sharing of your personal data with the trainee team members working at the Hamdan Foundation in Dubai (UAE), we will have to discontinue your participation in Global Talent Mentoring, because it is not technically possible to exclude some participants from this data transfer.
Migration of Program Management as of 1 November 2024.
As of 1 November 2024, day-to-day operations of Global Talent Mentoring will migrate from the University of Regensburg to the Hamdan Foundation in Dubai. As of that point, the University of Regensburg will cease to be Data Controller, and the Hamdan Foundation, located in Dubai (UAE), will take over as Data Controller. If you continue your participation in Global Talent Mentoring after 31 October 2024, your personal data will be controlled solely by the Hamdan Foundation, which is free to determine its own data-privacy and data-protection policies. As the Hamdan Foundation is located in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), it may choose to adhere data-privacy and data-protection policies that are not in line with those of the European Union, although the European Union requires all organizations targeting EU citizens as users to adhere to the GDPR. If you do not consent to a full transfer of all personal data held about you by Global Talent mentoring and to a full transfer of the responsibility for your personal data from the University of Regensburg to the Hamdan Foundation after 31 October 2024, you will need to discontinue your participation in Global Talent Mentoring before 1 November 2024 to prevent this transfer from happening.
Responsible Persons and How to File a Complaint
Global Talent Mentoring project director is Prof. Dr. Heidrun Stöger, Universität Regensburg, Lehrstuhl für Pädagogik (Schulpädagogik), Universitätsstraße 31, 93053 Regensburg, Germany, +49 (0) 941-943-1700, heidrun.stoeger@globaltalentmentoring.org. Questions about Global Talent Mentoring and the application platform can be sent to Prof. Dr. Stöger and Global Talent Mentoring digital infrastructure coordinator Mr. Matthias Mader, matthias.mader@globaltalentmentoring.org. We are a project of the Universität Regensburg. For this reason, the responsible person according to article 4, paragraph 7 of the GDPR is the president of the Universität Regensburg, Prof. Dr. Udo Hebel, Universität Regensburg, 93040 Regensburg, Germany, kontakt@ur.de. The official data protection officer of the Universität Regensburg is Ms. Susanne Stingl, Universität Regensburg, 93040 Regensburg, Germany, datenschutzbeauftragter@ur.de.
Should you wish to file a complaint in relation to our data protection practices, you have the right to do so. You may file a complaint with the competent supervisory authority, who, in this case, is the Bayerischer Landesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz (that is German for “data protection officer for Bavaria”), Postfach 22 12 19, 80502 München, Germany, poststelle@datenschutz-bayern.de.
Legal Basis for Our Processing of Your Information
The legal basis for our processing of your information is provided by article 6, paragraph 1, point (a) and article 9, paragraph 2, point (a) of the GDPR.
Your Rights in Connection with Your Data
You have the right to receive information about the personal data we have stored about you. If you so request, you will receive information about (a) the aims of the processing of your personal data, (b) the categories of your personal data we process, (c) the recipient(s) (or categories of recipients) to whom your personal data has been or will be made available in the future, (d) the length(s) of time your personal data will be saved or the criterion or criteria on which such a period is or such periods are based, and (e) the source(s) of your personal data that have not been directly obtained from you.
You have a right to have your personal data corrected and/or deleted. This means that you have the right to (a) stop us from processing of your personal data, (b) restrict how they are processed, and (c) have them deleted. The extent to which we fulfill your data-emendation and data-deletion requests may be limited by two factors: legal requirements that mandate us to continue to process your personal data (e.g., due to applicable university or archival laws in the European Union, Germany, or Bavaria) and previous and ongoing use of your personal data in pseudonymized form for research activities related to the application process and the mentoring program. In the case of data-deletion requests, we will make reasonable efforts to pseudonymize all data related to you that we have collected for our research. While efforts to pseudonymize your data will make it extremely difficult for anyone to connect data about you with your name or other unique forms of identification, we cannot guarantee perfect anonymization. This means that some risk remains that—despite our efforts to prevent this from happening—it may be technically possible to reconnect anonymized data with your name or other unique forms of identification. Finally, please note that if you stop us from processing your personal data, this will make it impossible for you to participate in Global Talent Mentoring. As explained above, we require this permission to the make participation possible. Any requests you make that restrict how we are processing your data may or may not prevent you from participating in Global Talent Mentoring, depending on the exact nature of your request.
You Are Not Legally Required to Share Your Personal Data with Us
As explained above, we will ask you to share personal data about yourself for the three ends described above. For this reason, you can only participate in Global Talent Mentoring by providing the kind of information during the mentoring and networking experience described above. In accordance with article 13, paragraph 2, point (e) of the GDPR, we point out to you that you are not legally required to provide any personal information. This means that no law or other government rule requires you to share information with us. Doing so is your choice. However, should you choose not to provide the requested information, you then cannot participate in Global Talent Mentoring. Your decision to not provide personal data would have no additional consequences besides making you ineligible to participate in Global Talent Mentoring.
Consent
In order to participate in Global Talent Mentoring you must allow us to use the data you provide as we have described above. You can grant us consent by affirming the four consent statements listed below.