DESY participating in six projects of the Hamburg State Excellence Initiative (July 2009)

 Landesexzellenzinitiative

The winners of the Hamburg State Excellence Initiative were named on 3 July. DESY is participating in six of these 13 projects. Eight clusters of excellence and five graduate schools were selected from a total of 21 competing applications, to be funded in the coming one and a half years with 16.5 million Euros.

DESY is involved in research collaborations covering topics ranging from nanotechnology and nanospintronics to the development of resistant and light materials and the combination of particle physics and cosmology. Through CFEL (Centre for Free-Electron Laser Science) DESY is also taking part in a post-graduate programme for infectional and structural biology.

Dr. Herlind Gundelach, Hamburg’s Science Senator, Petra Herz, chairwoman of the board of the Joachim Herz Foundation, and Professor Edwin Kreuzer, chairman of the German State Rectors’ Conference, presented the winning applications of the Hamburg State Excellence Initiative. The grants amount to about 200 000 Euros per year for a graduate school and up to 1.3 million Euros per year for a cluster of excellence. The cluster of excellence „Frontiers in Quantum Photon Science“ by the University of Hamburg and DESY bundles the Hamburg expertise of laser physics, quantum optics, X-ray and accelerator physics. It is supported with funds from the Joachim Herz Foundation, a partner of the Hamburg State Excellence Initiative. Petra Herz, chairwoman of the board of the Joachim Herz Foundation, emphasises: “With the support of the State Excellence Initiative, the Joachim Herz Foundation wants to give an impetus for the development and further shaping of Hamburg as a centre of science and research. The Foundation especially appreciated the incorporation of an international exchange of scientists in the cluster of excellence “Frontiers in Quantum Photon Science”. Apart from the research project’s scientific quality, this was the decisive element that contributed to choose this project.”

All competing applications were first evaluated by external scientists. The final funding decision was then made by a selection commission of seven members.


From: DESY News

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