The Mercator Science-Policy Fellowship-Programme is entering the third round. Once again, the Rhine-Main universities hosted leaders from politics, administration, the media and the non-profit sector to promote a structured exchange between science and do justice to the needs of decision-makers in various politico-administrative and socially relevant positions. The interests of the Fellows, newly admitted in 2018, ranged from digitization to artificial intelligence, from questions on the German party system to cooperation and development, education, arts and cultural mediation, mobility, the future of work, new trends in the life sciences and media and communication.

In the third year, the Fellowship-Programme has established itself as a form of dialogue between science and the policy sector at the Rhine-Main universities that is unique within Germany and which benefits both sides: The executives receive new scientific perspectives on their work areas, and the scientists involved in the three research-intense universities learn more about the practice and thus gain important impulses for their own work.

Technische Universität Darmstadt, Goethe University Frankfurt and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz of the Rhine-Main Universities Alliance (RMU) have issued a call for submissions to the RMU Initiative Funding for Teaching. Last year, cooperative projects from African studies, political science, archeology, and modern languages were selected for funding.

The RMU Initiative Funding for Teaching provides start-up funding for cooperative projects involving teachers from at least two of the three RMU universities. The call for submissions places particular emphasis on joint projects that represent a meaningful extension to existing course offerings in terms of content, method or didactics, and which demonstrate a sustainable perspective. Additional criteria are a demonstrable contribution to research-oriented, interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary teaching and studying, and the internationalisation of studying and teaching. Grants of up to 35,000 EUR may be awarded for a maximum of two years.

The selection of projects to receive grants will be made in the spring of 2019 in the RMU steering committee on the recommendation of the vice presidents for study and research from the three Rhine-Main Universities. The successful cooperative projects are expected to begin receiving funding from the RMU Initiative Funding for Teaching in the 2019 summer semester.

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The cooperation between the TU Darmstadt and the Goethe University Frankfurt offers students working toward the new B.Sc. Biomedical Engineering the unique opportunity in Hessen to benefit equally from the competences and knowledge of both a university of medicine and a technical university and obtain a degree jointly supported by both universities. The number of applicants, which far exceeded expectations in the run-up, underlines that the program is in line with current trends: The degree programme offers interdisciplinary teaching that suggests answers to the societal issues of tomorrow.

To meet the interdisciplinary demands of biomedical engineering, some eighty percent of the institutes teach engineering core competencies; some twenty percent lay the scientific-medical foundations. Students are also introduced to both disciplines as early as in the first semester. While mathematics, physics, and electrical engineering are all part of the curriculum in engineering, medicine is all about the fundamentals of natural science, the structure of the human body, and its functions. Right from the beginning, a close relationship between biomedical engineering and clinical issues has been established. Through internships and exercises, the theories conveyed in the lectures can be experienced right from the start.

The TU Darmstadt considers that about two-fifths of those enrolled for the first time are female to be a resounding success, particularly since women are still in the minority nationwide in STEM subjects. "Studies show that increasing numbers of women are interested in engineering sciences when these are interdisciplinary or include socio-political issues. The course of study of biomedical engineering

 is precisely this. Thus, the department was able to support TU Darmstadt's goal of attracting women to STEM subjects,” says Professor Andy Schürr, Dean of Studies at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology.

Of course, the high number of first-semesters, especially for a medically demanding teaching is a special time-consuming and resource-intensive burden. "But the cooperation between the TU Darmstadt and the Goethe University Frankfurt also opens up a whole new dimension for Hessen, not just for teaching," says Professor Robert Sader, Dean of Studies at the Goethe University's Department of Medicine. "Both universities are among the top universities in their field in Germany, and the combination of these two competencies creates significant added value and a multiplier effect that will sustainably promote biomedical engineering research at the Hessen location."

A master's programme in medical engineering following on from the Bachelor's degree is to be introduced in the winter semester 2021/2022, in time for the first Bachelor's graduates.

The "RMU Initiative Funding for Research", with which the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the Goethe University Frankfurt and the TU Darmstadt want to further strengthen their mutual scientific networking in the long term, proves to be a success story: In the third round of tenders, a total of 49 grant applications have been received for promising cross-university research collaborations - approximately twice as many as in the previous two rounds combined. The selection process was proportionately competitive. “We see the great interest in a grant from the RMU Initiative Funding for Research as a clear sign that the scientists of the RMU are cooperating ever more closely. Researchers are actively living the strategic alliance of the RMU,” says a delighted Professor Hans Jürgen Prömel, President of the TU Darmstadt.

A sustainable perspective, for example through the intended entry into large third-party funded follow-up projects, was a key criterion in the selection of the projects now funded. Similarly, the innovation potential or the pilot character of the research project was assessed. In addition, a sound justification or deepening of cooperation in the framework of the RMU was considered.

Finally, based on the recommendations of the RMU Research Council and after intensive consultation, the RMU Steering Committee adopted six projects for the support of the RMU Initiative Funding for Research. The support for a maximum of two years is up to 100,000 euros per year. The number of all the projects funded by the Fund will thus increase to 16, covering the entire spectrum of subjects offered by the three universities.

The projects that have recently been accepted focus on computer science, pharmacy, meteorology, educational research, African studies and business studies. "With this year's funding, we have specifically supported cross-location cooperation that benefits from the high degree of complementarity of the RMU and its extraordinary innovative strength. We want to exploit the synergetic potential of RMU as effectively as possible, especially in research,” said Professor Georg Krausch, President of Johannes Gutenberg University.

Birgitta Wolff, the President of Goethe University, concludes: "The three research-intense universities in the Rhine-Main area are ideal partners in a region that wants to develop as an attractive scientific landscape. Only a few regions in Germany have this strength. Our common task as RMU is to further develop these strengths from the inside out and to attract partners from science, politics and business. "

The next call for tenders for the RMU Initiative Fund for Research is expected to be in the coming year.

RMU

This is according to the '2018 Funding Atlas' (Förderatlas 2018) published by the German Research Foundation (DFG), which documents DFG funding received in the period from 2014 to 2016. During this period the RMU attracted more than six percent of all DFG funding granted to a total of 216 universities. This includes grants for the universities as a whole from the third funding programme in the Excellence Initiative (future concepts) as well as funding for infrastructure.

By comparison with the years 2011 to 2013 the total funding attracted by the RMU has increased by 42 million euros. The Goethe University Frankfurt attracted a total of 194.5 million euros between 2014 and 2016, the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz 133.4 million euros and TU Darmstadt 129.5 million euros.

The results of the DFG 'Funding Atlas' reflect the synergies of this regional alliance of universities. Due to their strong collaborative research consortiums and complementary characteristics the RMU have also significantly boosted their performance capability. While the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz occupies first place nationwide for the natural sciences with around 70 million euros of DFG grant funds, TU Darmstadt is also up there in pole position with 21 million euros of DFG funding for computer science and it ranks fourth nationwide for engineering at 82.5 million euros. In the life sciences the Goethe University Frankfurt achieves eighth place with 87.8 million euros and fifth for humanities at 56.3 million euros.

Looking at the overall picture, the results of the three RMU in all areas of academia underline how attractive the Rhine-Main is as a globally visible academic region, which is both nationally and internationally competitive. This is thanks in no small part to the diversity and highly complementary nature of the three research-focused universities in the region.

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Two universities, two disciplines and one goal: well-educated graduates in the field of Biomedical Engineering. Due to the cooperation between the two universities, students on the B.Sc. study programme in Biomedical Engineering have the unique opportunity in the German State of Hesse of benefiting from the expertise offered by a medical university and that offered by a technical university all at the same time. Students will obtain a degree that is jointly awarded by both universities.

“In the new study programme Biomedical Engineering, the profiles of TU Darmstadt and the Goethe University complement each other perfectly. Furthermore, we are strongly expanding research into Biomedical Engineering together and also in cooperation with the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Four new professorships will be created at TU Darmstadt in this field alone. The Rhine-Main Universities are thus pushing forward this future field of study to a significant extent in the Rhine-Main scientific region,” says TU President Professor Hans Jürgen Prömel.

Prof. Dr. Birgitta Wolff, President of Goethe University, emphasised: “The new study programme in Biomedical Engineering is a good example of how cooperation between partners who are already strong on their own can still open up new opportunities. As the engineering sciences in Darmstadt and medicine in Frankfurt complement each other well, it will enable the development of promising research projects that could not have originated at either of the universities alone. A particularly pleasing aspect is that teaching will also benefit because there were especially challenging obstacles that needed to be overcome due to the entrance restrictions for the subject of medicine. But we have now also managed to resolve these difficulties – with the support of the state government.”

In order to do justice to the interdisciplinary approach of Biomedical Engineering, around eighty percent of the courses will teach core skills in the engineering sciences and around twenty percent will focus on basic medical knowledge. In order to participate in both specialist cultures and make them tangible for students, the teaching will also be conducted at both universities: four days per week at TU Darmstadt and one day per week on-site in the Faculty of Medicine at the Goethe University Frankfurt. It is one example of how interdisciplinary and inter-university cooperation can tackle the issues of tomorrow.

Demographic change is without doubt one of the challenges of our time. Life expectancy is rising, birth rates are falling and age-related diseases and problems are increasing. The demand for telemedicine, biotechnologies and Biomedical Engineering is growing. Whether smart implants, orthoses or point-of-care diagnostics, it is important to already focus on the growing importance of biomedical technologies today. TU Darmstadt and the Goethe University Frankfurt have identified this trend and expanded their range of study programmes for the future to include the B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering.

A Master's study programme in Biomedical Engineering that will follow on from the Bachelor degree will be introduced in the winter semester 2021/2022 – just in time for the first graduates from the Bachelor degree. Applications for the Bachelor degree in Biomedical Engineering can be submitted to TU Darmstadt from 01/06/2018.

A selection of views of Lake Malawi adorns the walls of the offices of the Centre for Interdisciplinary African Studies (ZIAF) of Goethe University Frankfurt. There are fishing boats to be seen - some silhouetted against the blue of the water, others colored red by the sundown. It was Dr. Stefan Schmid who took these photos while he was in East Africa. Schmid, who holds a doctorate in geography, and his colleague, the biologist Dr. Karen Hahn, coordinate the projects, activities and events organized by the ZIAF. “The ZIAF has been in existence as a separate organization since 2003, but what makes us special is that we are one of the few such institutes in Germany that is not linked to one specific academic discipline. We work on a completely interdisciplinary basis,” explains Schmid. “The President’s Office of Goethe University originally decided to establish the ZIAF and made the necessary finances available.” 

Following the formation of the African Studies Rhine-Main alliance by the universities in Frankfurt, Mainz and Darmstadt in May 2016, all three locations can now benefit from the support of the ZIAF. "As we already have the required structures in place, it seems only reasonable to allow all three universities to profit from what we have to offer,” adds Hahn. “When we got down to forming the African Studies Rhine-Main alliance, we were all agreed that there was no need to specifically formalize this aspect of our work. What we concentrate on is the actual research, although at the same time we do take a very pragmatic approach when we consider what the ZIAF should be coordinating.”

The ZIAF in Frankfurt currently counts among its members some 80 academics from seven faculties of Goethe University together with affiliated organizations, including the Senckenberg Nature Research Society, the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE) and the Frobenius Institute, and it thus plays a correspondingly important role in the new African Studies Rhine-Main alliance. In addition, Hahn and Schmid are also witnessing the generation of innovative synergies as a result of the collaboration with the universities in Mainz and Darmstadt. "For instance, we are already seeing a close partnership developing between the botanists in Mainz and Frankfurt,” points out Hahn. "They are looking at each other’s work and determining whether this can help with their own research.” Related disciplines have expressed interest in participating and plans for a new research network in the field of gene evolution and ecology are already on the table. "In addition, several postdoctoral researchers and doctoral candidates have formed their own group. There will be plenty going on there, too." 

Hahn also expects there will be fresh input to the DFG-sponsored AFRASO or Africa’s Asian Options project, which researches the connections between Asia and Africa. "The project is at present in its phase-out period and we will be drafting new concepts for a follow-up project.” Schmidt considers it possible that one potential topic could be the links between Africa and a wide range of other countries. "Many people in Germany are unaware of the fact that Turkey is among the major investors when it comes to Africa.”

The objective of the new alliance is not to reinvent African Studies as such, but this discipline will be given new life through the collaboration between Frankfurt, Mainz and Darmstadt and, at the same time, will be put on a broader footing. "In many areas, we are able to tie in with what is already in place,” clarifies Schmid. “One feature of the program of the ZIAF was an event for young researchers on the subject of the ethics of research in Africa. We have since developed these individual events into a seminar, and can now invite our colleagues in Mainz and Darmstadt to participate.”

The general intention is to considerably facilitate access to existing resources for all three partners. Schmidt cites the examples of the Rock Art Archive held by the Frobenius Institute and the former DFG African Special Collection in Frankfurt’s university library: "The latter is by far the largest collection of works in the fields of the humanities, culture and social sciences focusing on Africa south of the Sahara.” JGU also has unique and valuable holdings in this respect in the form of the Jahn Library for African Literatures and its African Music Archives. "You’ll only find something similar in the USA,” avers Prof. Thomas Bierschenk of JGU’s Department of Anthropology and African Studies.  "And our Ethnographic Teaching Collection would be enough to start furnishing a museum.” 

Schmid looks across to his photos of Malawi. "Of course, we’ll also be sharing the infrastructures we have already established in the various African countries, such as our centers in Mali and in Malawi.  Looks to me inevitable that these could provide the bases for mutual teaching or research trips. Someone in Mainz has recently written a dissertation on our Cultural and Museum Center in Karonga."

Prof. Bierschenk does not merely have his eye on the continent of Africa when he talks about the African Studies Rhine-Main alliance from the point of view of JGU - for him, it is the research landscape as a whole that is important and the role that the project will play in that context.   "There are only very few major African Studies centers in Germany,” he says. "Admittedly, there is a lot going on in Berlin, but their activities are not particularly well coordinated. The subject has traditionally been a research focus of the University of Bayreuth and this probably represents the main center of African Studies in Europe. But our alliance means we can certainly compete with them. Our centers in Frankfurt and Mainz are influential in their own right - together with Darmstadt we are now a major player.”

The participating researchers are busy on many different levels deciding on the direction that this new consortium should take. "A project already in the pipeline involves appointments to two professorships in Frankfurt and Mainz that became vacant at more or less the same time,” asserts Bierschenk. Both locations currently only each have a single professor of linguistics working in the field of African Studies. "In view of the fact there are more than 3,000 languages spoken in Africa, our professors seem rather thin on the ground. So we intend to supplement them: in Frankfurt, they’ll be focusing on empirical linguistics while we will be appointing a professor of sociolinguistics - and together we plan to develop a shared degree course. This will enable us to extend and round out our linguistics curriculum.” Bierschenk believes that this concept could well set a precedent: “In the near future, we’ll see a whole new generation moving into place in both Frankfurt and Mainz. It will be necessary to make new appointments to quite a few professorships in the coming years. This will be an opportunity that we can exploit.”

In structural terms, the African Studies departments in Mainz and Frankfurt complement each other perfectly. “In Frankfurt, their core unit specifically devoted to African Studies is actually relatively small, but many other disciplines there are extensively involved in the subject in one way or another.” The corresponding core unit in Mainz is more extensive. “With its more than 30 personnel, the Department of Anthropology and African Studies on the Gutenberg campus is one of the largest university centers for sociological and cultural research on Africa in Germany.” Darmstadt has its own special role to play. “It’s true that they do not have a dedicated African Studies department, but the Darmstadt academics have particular expertise in the fields of urban planning and the history of technology. They are very useful cooperation partners when we are dealing with aspects such as the development or sociology of African settlements.” 

Frankfurt, Mainz and Darmstadt aim to construct an African Studies network that brings together the three universities, coordinates their teaching and research capacities and - last but not least - takes new directions within the discipline. At the same time, they propose to retain and improve on those aspects that are already tried-and-tested. The alliance is large and will be able to achieve much.

Using laser spectroscopy the researchers investigated individual atoms of nobelium and discovered a variety of excited states. The experiment was conducted by an international collaboration under the leadership of the department Superheavy Elements Physics at GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung.

The experiments were jointly conducted by scientists from GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, the Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz, the Helmholtz Institute in Mainz, the Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany) with Prof. Dr. Thomas Walther and his employees Felix Lautenschläger and Premaditya Chhetri, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), the University of Liverpool (UK), and TRIUMF (Vancouver, Canada). The researchers reported their findings in the scientific journal Nature.

Hard to investigate

We know the energy spectra of most of the 118 elements that have been discovered to date. However, scientists were previously unable to experimentally investigate the elements beyond fermium (transfermium elements), which have more than 100 protons in the nucleus and the same number of electrons in their electron shells. Research is hampered by the fact that the inner structure of these atoms is greatly influenced by the relativistic effects caused by the high speeds at which the electrons orbit atomic nuclei with such high proton numbers and by the interactions between the many electrons. Like the other transfermium elements, nobelium is very hard to investigate experimentally. Nobelium does not occur in nature and can only be produced artificially in very small numbers of atoms. As a result, the element’s properties and inner structure are largely unknown.

Sensitive method

An extremely sensitive method, which had been developed by the group of Professor Hartmut Backe und Dr. Werner Lauth at the Institutes of Physics and of Nuclear Physics at Mainz University in the early 1990s, was now used to detect and characterize excited states of nobelium atoms for the first time.

“At the GSI accelerator facility, we bombarded thin films of lead with calcium projectiles in order to create the isotope nobelium-254 by fusing the atomic nuclei of the reaction partners. We then used the SHIP separator to isolate the nobelium isotopes, which enabled us to irradiate them with laser light,” writes Professor Michael Block, head of the department Superheavy Elements Physics, GSI, and head of the section Superheavy Elements Physics, HIM, about the experiment. The team determines the energy transitions in the electron shell by varying the energy of the irradiating laser light.

If the transition energy is correct, the laser light is absorbed and an electron is removed from the atom, turning it into a positively charged ion. This ion can then be clearly identified on the basis of its radioactive decay. “The experiment unit is so sensitive that only about four atoms need to be created per second for our experiments. The radioactive nobelium atoms exist for only 50 seconds before they decay again,” says Dr. Mustapha Laatiaoui, GSI scientist heading the experiment.
Extending the investigations
After the researchers had measured the first atomic transition in nobelium-254, they were able to extend their investigations to the even shorter-lived isotope nobelium-252, which can be created at only one fifth the rate of nobelium-254. The measurement of the energy shift of an atomic transition between different isotopes provides information about the size of their respective nuclides.

For the first time the experiments allowed measuring the atomic structure of a transfermium element, e.g., the element nobelium (Z=102) with laser spectroscopy. The extremely high precision with which the energies of the atomic states were measured during the laser experiments provides a basis for further theoretical work and opens up new perspectives for future high-precision experiments for the measurement of the atomic and nuclear properties of the unstable nuclides of super-heavy elements.