News Release

DFG establishes first German-Sino Research Training Group

17 new research training groups to be funded

Grant and Award Announcement

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) has decided to establish 17 new Research Training Groups. This decision was reached by the responsible Grants Committee in its meeting on 21 April. Amongst those selected from the 42 new proposals are six International Research Training Groups. For the first time, this includes a German-Sino Research Training Group. In addition, the Committee decided that, in the future, participants may apply for funding for network meetings between several Research Training Groups. This measure is meant to support the exchange of expertise and ideas as well as the members' personal initiative. In addition, from 1 July 2004 onwards, the fellowship rates for doctoral students will be increased from €921 to €1,000 per month. At present, the DFG funds a total of 260 Research Training Groups, 29 of which are international.

The first German-Sino Research Training Group, "Modelling the Flow of Materials and Production Systems for the Sustained Utilisation of Resources in Intensive Agronomical and Market Gardening Systems in the North-Chinese Lowland Plain", will deal with environmental hazards resulting from the highly intense agricultural production in that area. The key focus of this cooperation between the University of Hohenheim and the China Agricultural University of Beijing lies on the topic of sustained yield in the sense of environmentally compatible methods of production that are economically and socially justifiable on a long-term basis.

In another International Research Training Group, Liebig University in Giessen, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in New York will collaborate on the project "Signaling Mechanisms in Lung Physiology and Disease". By working on lung diseases in children and adults, the participants will prepare themselves for a career in biomedical research in universities or industry. The participants will work in the fields of molecular biology and pathophysiology of the lungs at the interface between basic and clinical research.

In cooperation with the Norwegian universities in Bergen and Oslo, the universities of Heidelberg and Mannheim will work on the subject "Development and Application of Intelligent Detectors". In this Research Training Group, detector systems using modern information technology will be developed and applied on experimental particle and nuclear physics, whereby physicists will be brought together with information specialists to explore particle physics, working with the most progressive design, simulation and analysis tools.

In "Medial Historiographies", one of the newly established Research Training Groups in Germany, researchers at the Bauhaus University of Weimar and the universities of Erfurt and Jena will examine the relationship between history and the media. The historical starting point are the radical changes caused by new technical communications in the 19th century as well as the emergence of modern historical concepts that have developed from the tension between events and process since the end of the 18th century. The project will focus on the effectiveness of the media in different cultures as well as how media and media techniques determine how their own history is written.

The new Research Training Groups include:

  • Prospective Design of Human and Technological Interaction, Technical University of Berlin
  • Conformation Conversions of Macromolecular Interactions, University of Halle-Wittenberg
  • Molecular Foundations in Dynamic Cellular Processes, University of Münster
  • Functional Genome Research in Veterinary Medicine, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
  • The Significance of Genetic Polymorphisms in Oncology: From the Basics to Individualised Therapy, University of Göttingen
  • Gender as a Scientific Category, Humboldt University of Berlin
  • Paths of Routine Processes, Free University in Berlin
  • Non-equilibrium Phenomena in Low-temperature Plasmas: Diagnosis – Modelling – Applications, Ruhr University of Bochum
  • Presentation Theory and its Applications in Mathematics and Physics, Bergische University of Wuppertal
  • Signaling Mechanisms in Lung Physiology and Disease, Liebig University of Giessen
  • History and Culture of Metropolises of the 20th Century, Technical University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, Free University in Berlin
  • Political Communication from Antiquity to the 20th Century, University of Frankfurt am Main
  • Archive, Power, Knowledge – Organising, Controlling, Destroying Stocks of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Present, University of Bielefeld
  • Catalysts and Catalytic Reactions for Organic Systems, University of Freiburg
  • Development and Application of Intelligent Detectors, University of Heidelberg
  • Medial Historiographies, Bauhaus University of Weimar
  • Modelling the Flow of Materials and Production Systems for the Sustained
  • Utilisation of Resources in Intensive Agronomical and Market Gardening Systems in the North-Chinese Lowland Plain, University of Hohenheim

Since 1990, the DFG has been funding Research Training Groups for outstanding doctoral students in all scientific disciplines. Under the guidance of well-qualified professors in research and teaching, 15 to 25 of them work in an interdisciplinary research and study programme. At present, about six per cent of all doctoral students in Germany complete their doctorates in Research Training Groups. Graduates from Research Training Groups are generally more extensively qualified and, on average, two years younger than other doctoral students. Twenty-seven per cent of the participants in Research Training Groups are international doctoral students, a figure almost three times as high as the national average.

For further information on the DFG's Research Training Groups, please visit: http://www.dfg.de/en/research_funding/coordinated_programmes/research_training_groups

For more detailed information, please contact Dr. Jörg Schneider (Research Training Groups, Research Careers Division), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Kennedyallee 40, D-53175 Bonn, Germany, Tel.: 49-228-885-2424, E-mail: joerg.schneider@dfg.de.

###


Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.