Research News
Ten Russian young female scientists received the UNESCO-L’Oréal Sponsorship Award. Marina Drutskaya (5th from the right) coordinates a Helmholtz-Russia Joint Research Group. Photo: Ignat Solovey, STRF.ru
Helmholtz International
On this special page, we report news from the Helmholtz offices in Brussels, Moscow and Beijing several times a year. Specific focus is on cooperation and partnership ventures of the Helmholtz Association in Russia, China and the EU as well as on select international research policy news.
News from the Brussels Office:
"Horizon 2020" is the title of the next EU framework programme for the promotion of research and innovation, to become effective in 2014 and thus replacing the current 7th Framework Programme for research. The idea behind "Horizon 2020": More research concepts are to actually find their way to being implemented in the markets. To this end, the European Commission intends to fund the fields of research and innovation with about 80 billion Euro over the course of the programme period of 2014 to 2020. The overarching topics of the programme are "Excellent Science", "Industrial Leadership" and "Societal Challenges". The benefactors of the "Horizon 2020" budget include the European Research Council as well as the fields of energy and transport. New fields of funding include biotechnology, finance instruments for innovation funding and the with regard to topics rather open field of Future and Emerging Technologies (FET). This is the official proposal for the programme published by the Commission at the end of November 2011.
However, the budget proposed by the Commission falls significantly short of the European Parliament's recommendation of placing at the disposal of "Horizon 2020" resources to an amount of 100 billion Euro (this would have corresponded with doubling the 50 billion Euro from the 7th Framework Programme for research). The on-going financing of the two large-scale projects ITER and GMES remains as yet unsettled.
2012 will be the decisive year for the organisation of "Horizon 2020" – in a first step, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union will debate the draft proposal. After a longer process of debate, which can last up to one and a half years, "Horizon 2020" is to be passed. The Brussels office will follow the debate and introduce the interests of the Helmholtz Association and its centres into the discussion.
The official Commission documents on "Horizon 2020" can be accessed for review under this link: www.helmholtz.de/horizon2020-docs
Together with the centres, the Helmholtz Association has published a Position Paper on Aspects of Health Research within Horizon 2020. The central questions: Which research topics are to be stressed within Horizon 2020? What are the most urgent questions regarding health research from the Helmholtz Association's point of view? In addition to topics focusing on diseases, the position paper deals also with horizontal issues and methods.
ERC-Grants: In the 2011 call for applications, nine ERC Starting Grants went to the Helmholtz Association – five "Life Sciences" grants and four in the category of "Physical Sciences and Engineering". Including these new grants, a total of 26 Helmholtz scientists have received funds from a Starting Grant since 2007.
At present, the European Research council has put to tender a new funding programme, the "Synergy Grants". The total budget comprises 150 million Euro, applications for the programme can be submitted up until the cut-off date of 25 January 2012. Information can be obtained from the Brussels office.
News from the Moscow Office:
Ten Russian Young Female Scientists Receive International Award “For Women in Science”
On 10 November 2011 in Moscow, ten excellent Russian young female scientists were honoured with the UNESCO L'Oreal Sponsorship Award endowed with 400,000 Rouble (approx. 10,000 Euro). The call for applications has been introduced in Russia in 2007 and is conducted in cooperation with the Russian Academy of Sciences. It promotes talented young female scientists from Russian research institutions and universities working on research topics of future relevance in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine and biology. In 2011, ten of 400 submitted applications were selected by the chairman of the selection committee Alexey Khokhlov, Vice-Chancellor of the Moscow State University.
One of the awardees is Dr Marina Drutskaya, researcher at the renowned Moscow Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology and coordinator for the Russian side of a Helmholtz-Russia Joint Research Group (HRJRG). Together with partners from the Max Delbrück Centre for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch, the team around Marina Drutskaya researches the basic molecular genetic principles for the immune therapy of cancer.
HRJRG: Positive Balance and Outlook
A new call for applications within the programme Helmholtz-Russia Joint Research Groups (HRJRG) is scheduled for February 2012. This was decided by the President of the Helmholtz Association, Professor Dr Jürgen Mlynek, and the Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, Professor Dr Vladislav Panchenko at the end of October in Berlin, after they had selected six new HRJRGs. The new call for applications will be focused on the topic of "Photons, Ions, Neutrons".
The Helmholtz-Russia Joint Research Groups (HRJRG) programme was established in 2006. Since then, 20 German-Russian research groups have been selected for funding in three calls for applications. The six new groups will commence their work as of January 2012. The funding programme constitutes an attractive career perspective in particular for young scientists from Germany and Russia; it strengthens the bilateral research cooperation and focuses on research issues of strategic relevance.
Helmholtz Scientists Win Russian Mega Grants
Once again, the second round of the Russian funding programme for leading scientists of international standing includes winners from Helmholtz centres: Professor Dr Friedrich Wagner, retired Director at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and Alexey Ustinov, professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), have received the Russian government grant totalling 150 million Rouble (approx. 3.5 million Euro) and will over the course of the next three years establish laboratories at Russian partner universities. A total of 517 applications were submitted this time; 39 grants are awarded.
Professor Friedrich Wagner goes to St Petersburg to establish the laboratory "Physics of Advanced Tokamaks" at the city's Polytechnical University. The team of scientists comprising some 80 collaborators conducts research on theoretical and experimental questions regarding the plasma inclusion in fusion facilities of the Tokamak type. The renowned Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St Petersburg cooperates on the project.
Alexey Ustinov will establish a research laboratory for "Superconducting Metamaterials" at the National Research University of Technology "MISIS". His research is conducted in parallel in Karlsruhe and Moscow. The commitment of these two Helmholtz researchers will further strengthen the cooperation between Helmholtz centres and Russian universities.
News from the Beijing Office:
Invitations Now: CSC Finances Visits Abroad and Doctorates for Chinese Young Scientists
For the coming five years, the China Scholarship Council (CSC) will support 2,500 Chinese PhD students obtaining their doctorate abroad. An additional 3,500 sandwich students and 10,000 guest scientists, in particular post-doctoral graduates, intending to conduct research abroad are to be likewise supported. Requirements include a good knowledge of the English language (ILTS 6.5 und TOEFL 95) and excellent scientific quality of work.
Over the course of the past five years, some 180 Chinese young scientist were enabled to work at Helmholtz Association centres. This was made possible by a jointly financed grant by the CSC and the Helmholtz Association, which now has expired. Yet Chinese doctoral students and post-docs continue to have the possibility of conducting research in Germany with funding from a CSC grant. "After all, Germany is the second most popular country for Chinese scientists, right after the USA", explains Dr Hong He, Head of Office at the Helmholtz office in Beijing. In 2011, more than 700 scholarship holders decided to go to Germany, of which 540 planned a sojourn of four years to obtain their doctoral degree.
Helmholtz research groups wanting to win over young scientists from China now ought to speedily summarise their respective project definition and forward it to Dr Hong He in Beijing by means of a call for applications via the respective centre's administration department. Dr Hong He stresses that, "we achieve significantly more visibility in the medium term, if the Helmholtz centres forward attractive research topics to China by way of a proposal, and increase the reputation of the Helmholtz centres as partners for research in China."
In order to pass the next selection round, the Chinese students require an invitation from the hosting research institution in advance. This is of a certain urgency: For their own planning, the students need the invitation by the end of 2011. "The best is to react immediately, once contact with an interested student is made", advises He. For the talented young researchers cast their search world-wide to use this unique opportunity of obtaining a CSC grant. An invitation and reliable promise from a renowned research centre is of greatest importance for each student.
The cut-off date for the CSC grant online application is in March 2012. However, the students need to obtain acceptance from a host institution far in advance.
So far, the Research Centre Jülich has displayed the greatest degree of activity in inviting CSC scholarship holders. The Research Centre Jülich has already compiled 42 calls for application for 2012 and forwarded these to the Helmholtz Office Beijing.
For more information, please contact the Helmholtz Office in Beijing.
