RMU Collaborative Research Centres successful: DFG provides funding for an-other four years
The German Research Foundation (DFG) is investing around 24 million euros in the extension of two joint Collaborative Research Centres (SFBs) of the Rhine-Main Universities (RMU). This will enable the RMUs to continue their fundamental research into selective autophagy and the physics of atomic nuclei. The DFG’s two Collaborative Research Centres will now be funded for another four years.
Optical chamber for precision laser spectroscopy experiments in SFB 1245. Picture: Felix Sommer
“Top-level research in a network” – this is what the DFG’s Collaborative Research Centres (Sonderforschungsbereiche, SFBs) stand for; large, interdisciplinary, closely cooperating and, above all, long-term projects for the purpose of jointly conducted fundamental research. SFB 1177 ‘Molecular and Functional Characterization of Selective Autophagy’ and SFB 1245 ‘Nuclei: From Fundamental Interactions to Structure and Stars’ are among these highly visible collaborative research institutions, which have been shaping the German scientific landscape in a special way for decades.
Both SFBs were established in 2016 and are thus among the first collaborative research consortia created under the leadership of one of the three universities since the RMU Alliance was founded: SFB 1177 in Frankfurt am Main, SFB 1245 in Darmstadt. Which makes them RMU institutions in the narrower sense: researchers from two Rhine-Main Universities are cooperating in both. For example, in SFB 1177, researchers from Goethe University (spokesperson) work together with colleagues from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the Mainz Institute of Molecular Biology, Georg-Speyer-Haus and from Munich, Tübingen, Freiburg and the MPI of Biophysics. In SFB 1245, TU Darmstadt (spokesperson) cooperates with Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research.
Both Collaborative Research Centres, which can now continue their work for another four years, are pioneers in their respective research fields: SFB 1177 is the first collaborative research consortium in Germany to look at selective autophagy, the degradation and utilisation of one’s own components by cells at a molecular and cellular level. The knowledge generated by this consortium could, in future, help to fight cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and infections more effectively.
SFB 1245 coordinates the work of more than 100 scientists in order to understand the structure of atomic nuclei and the origin of elements in the universe based on effective field theories of strong interaction. As one of the most important university centres for the experimental and theoretical physics of nuclear structure and nuclear astrophysics, TU Darmstadt is combining its outstanding expertise with the top-level research of Johannes Gutenberg University in the field of particle physics.