Top-level research in Berlin: DFG once again funds Collaborative Research Centres with 63 million euros

In Berlin, five Collaborative Research Centres (SFBs) will be extended from July 2022, two of them as supraregional research collaborations. This will allow the SFBs to continue their successful research work, as the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) announced today.

All proposals with Berlin participation have been approved by the DFG and will receive a total of 63 million euros over the next four years. The funding programme for Collaborative Research Centres is one of the DFG's most competitive and enables particularly innovative and elaborate research topics to be addressed. The total number of SFBs in Berlin is now 33, 15 of which are supraregional.

Science Senator Ulrike Gote comments: "Top-level research in Berlin has once again been able to prove its strength and benefits in particular from a pronounced culture of cooperation. The close cooperation of Berlin researchers across subjects and institutes' boundaries, also with other outstanding institutions nationwide and abroad, underlines the impressive research performance of our universities and creates great added value for our society and for Berlin. I warmly congratulate all those involved!"

The topic of memory consolidation with a system-wide approach is the focus of a continued SFB in the field of brain research at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Freie Universität Berlin is receiving an extension of its natural science SFB "Scale Cascades in Complex Systems", in which interdisciplinary work is being done on problems and challenging modelling, especially from the life and earth sciences. At the Charité, an SFB will be extended that is dedicated to researching methods of in vivo imaging and their suitability for investigating therapy effects. In addition, two supra-regional SFBs will be extended in cooperation with the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg: at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Technische Universität Berlin on the topic of "Mathematical modelling, simulation and optimisation using the example of gas networks", which is topical in terms of energy policy, and at the Charité on the research topic of chronic inflammatory bowel diseases, for which there are currently no cures and there is an urgent clinical need.

Overview of all funded projects (funding amounts incl. 22 percent programme flat rate):

• Collaborative Research Centre 1114 (3rd funding period) "Scale cascades in complex systems"; applicant university: Freie Universität Berlin (spokesperson: Prof. Dr. Frank Noé); other participating partner institutions: Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, University of Potsdam, Helmholtz Centre Potsdam - German Research Centre for Geosciences, Konrad Zuse Centre for Information Technology Berlin, Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics - Leibniz Institute in the Research Association Berlin e. V.; funding amount: €9.5 millions

• Collaborative Research Centre 1315 (2nd funding period) "Mechanisms and Disorders of Memory Consolidation: From Synapses to the Systems Level"; applicant university: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (spokesperson: Prof. Dr. Matthew Larkum); other participating partner institutions: Free University of Berlin, Technical University of Berlin, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, University of Greifswald, German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine Berlin, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology Seewiesen; funding amount: €14.9 millions

• Collaborative Research Centre 1340 (2nd funding period) "In vivo visualisation of the pathologically altered extracellular matrix "Matrix in Vision""; applicant university: Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin (spokesperson: Prof. Dr. med. Bernd Hamm); other participating partner institutions: Free University of Berlin, Technical University of Berlin, Technical University of Munich, Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt; funding amount: €14.5 millions

• Collaborative Research Centre/Transregio 154 (3rd funding period) "Mathematical modelling, simulation and optimisation using the example of gas networks"; applicant universities: Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (co-spokesperson: Prof. Dr. Caren Tischendorf), Technische Universität Berlin, Technische Universität Darmstadt; other participating partner institutions: University of Duisburg-Essen, Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics - Leibniz Institute in the Berlin Research Association e. V.; funding amount: €8.9 millions

• Collaborative Research Centre/Transregio 241 (2nd funding period) "Immune-Epithelial Signalling Pathways in Chronic Inflammatory Bowel Diseases"; applicant universities: Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin (co-spokesperson: Prof. Dr. med. Britta Siegmund); other applicant partner institutions: Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Innsbruck Medical University, German Rheumatism Research Center Berlin, Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine Berlin; funding amount: €15.4 millions

SFB 1315: Website

More information: List of current Collaborative Research Centres

Source: Press Release DFG