Facts and Figures

Funding and costs

 The total Helmholtz Association budget amounts to around €3.4 billion. A good two thirds of this funding comes from public sponsors (in a 9:1 split between Federal and Länder authorities). The individual Helmholtz Centres are responsible for attracting more than 30% themselves in the form of contract funding provided by public and private sector sponsors (see download section to the right).

Staff

Since 1st January 2012 the number of staff has risen up to 31,745. In 2010 the Helmholtz Association employed 30,995 staff (previous year 29.556). 10,458 staff were scientists (previous year 9,718).

Please note that the table (see downloads) does not count individuals but rather person years, an abstract value which records the calculated number or work hours across all staff. Core-funded work hours stand for the staff paid for by programme-oriented funding. 

Activities

 The Helmholtz Association concentrates its resources within specific programmes where it carries out top-class research in six research fields. These are Energy, Earth and Environment, Health, Key Technologies, Structure of Matter plus Aeronautics, Space and Transport.
 

• In 2010, 9,285 publications were published in ISI indexed scientific journals and a further 2,285 other refereed publications. The number of ISI indexed publications increased by 11 percent compared with the previous year.
• In 2010, Helmholtz researchers have raised more than one billion euros for their scientific research work.

The Helmholtz Association aims to provide outstanding minds with excellent conditions for creative work. 
 

• Each year, several thousand visiting scientists and researchers from all around the world come to the Helmholtz Centres, not least to work on the large-scale scientific facilities and instrumentation which these Centres have; in some cases, this equipment is the only one of its kind in the world. By now around 5,800 foreign scientists work in the Helmholtz Centres. 
• Helmholtz gives young scientists the opportunity to work in major teams of international researchers and to use the high-performance research infrastructure for their projects. In 2010 Helmholtz enabled some 5,320 doctoral students to gain further qualifications at the research centres and to work independently at an early stage (Compare to 4,797 doctoral students in 2009).

 Helmholtz transfers scientific knowledge into innovation and on into the market and so contributes to creating the technological basis for a competitive society. 
 

• 365 granted patents in 2010
• 49 spin-offs from the Helmholtz Centres for the last five years 
• more than 16 millions receipts from licence agreements
• more than 2,750 collaborative projects with industry 

 illustrate the Helmholtz Association's commitment.