The first DFG research centers to be funded for another four years

Institutions in Bremen, Karlsruhe and Wurzburg impress with outstanding scientific achievements and capacity-building effects

Following a successful second funding period, the first three DFG Research Centres will again be extended and will continue for another four years. This decision was made by the Joint Committee of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) at its spring session in Bonn. As a result, the Research Centres established in 2001—"The Ocean in the Earth System" in Bremen, "The Center for Functional Nanostructures" in Karlsruhe, and "Research Center for Experimental Biomedicine" in Würzburg—will be able to continue their work through mid-2013. Each of the three centres will receive total funding of approximately 25 million euros in the next four years.

In recent months, all three centres were reviewed by high-calibre peer review panels and were unanimously recommended for continued funding. As the reviewers from Germany and abroad had already done, the Joint Committee of the DFG has, by way of its approval, also underscored the outstanding scientific work and capacity-building effects of the Research Centres: "The centres represent top-level research at the highest international level and the successful bundling of scientific know-how in particularly forward-looking fields of research," said DFG President Professor Matthias Kleiner following the Joint Committee's decision. Kleiner recalled that the Research Centres were established by the DFG in mid-2001 as "a completely new and strategic funding instrument". Working together in these centres are both various departments and institutes of the respective universities as well as universities and non-university research institutions. "With these diverse collaborations and with their cumulative scientific expertise, the Research Centres have, thus, also become a model for the clusters of excellence in the Excellence Initiative of the federal and state governments," said Kleiner.

For the institutions in Bremen, Karlsruhe and Würzburg, all of which already received positive reviews and extensions in early 2005, this marks the beginning of the third funding period. Since then, all three have been able to continue their successfully started research projects, as the reviewers emphasised in their recommendations.