07. December 2005 External partners
Address on the Award of the Science Prize Of The Stifterverband 2005 – Erwin Schrödinger Prize (Translation)
Dr. Klaus Rauscher at the 2005 Annual General Assembly of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres.
[Translation]
Dear Professor Mlynek,
Dear Senator Dräger,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We have just been able to acquaint ourselves with today's prizewinners and their research work. This is why I would rather dispense with giving yet another laudation. Since I am here today on behalf of Dr. Oetker as a representative of the Donors' Association for the Promotion of Sciences and Humanities in Germany (Stifterverband), I would like to take this opportunity to explain exactly what our intentions are in endowing the Schrödinger Prize with a sum of, after all, 50,000 euros. For it is indeed also, but not exclusively, scientific excellence that we wish to acknowledge in awarding our Science Prizes.
So, allow me please first to say a few general words about the Stifterverband. As a joint initiative of German business and industry we are firmly convinced that the future capability of our country depends very decisively on the performance capacity and efficiency of our science and education system. To maintain and improve this performance we firstly need to provide adequate and also internationally competitive financial resources for our system of science and research. We must also not lose sight of the goal defined in Lisbon by the EU heads of government, namely to spend at least 3% of GDP on research and development throughout Europe by 2010. To achieve this, the annual rate of growth in public funds allocated to science and research organisations, as defined in the Pact for Research and Innovation, must be continued up until 2010. The same applies to the Initiative on Excellence launched by federal government and the federal states to provide urgently needed resources for the universities. While German business and industry, too, will contribute towards achieving the Lisbon Goal by intensifying its R&D efforts.
But the efficiency of the structures is just as important as the financial resources. This is precisely where the Stifterverband sets out to work together with its partners in business and industry, science and research and in politics to identify deficits and to encourage improvements by honouring and promoting pilot projects. The five science prizes that we award in cooperation with German science and research organisations also serve the goal of achieving structural reform. Because even now too many barriers still exist in the German science and research system that have an negative impact on research and innovation. By awarding the science prizes we distinguish researchers who have produced outstanding research findings by overcoming such barriers. So by conferring awards for these achievements we want to focus attention on the prizewinners as role models and so exert a retroactive influence on the science and research system.
The Erwin Schrödinger Prize is awarded for research work that crosses borders. There can be no doubt whatsoever that our prizewinners have met this criterion by finding novel and innovative ways of combining their respective research in the fields of mathematics, physics and medicine. Indeed, this cooperation has not only broken open disciplinary borders, but has also torn down institutional barriers between a university and a Helmholtz Centre. Professor Sturm und Professor Tass have demonstrated that it is possible to initiate joint projects from which both institutions profit despite the oft-lamented division between universities and non-university research institutes. This is a pleasing success for the Helmholtz Association's general policy of seeking out and institutionalising cooperation with universities, be it through joint appointments, by founding "Virtual Institutes", by establishing joint Young Investigators Groups, or by preparing joint Collaborative Research Centres. The Helmholtz Association can act as a role model here for the some of the other organisations active in science and research.
Finally, our prizewinners have also crossed the border between basic research and application, because they are forming a company that aims to prepare and produce the new brain pacemaker for clinical application. As a representative of industry, I would like to acknowledge this achievement particularly and - in the interest of the patients - would like to wish you every success as you proceed in realising this project. Indeed, exchange processes between science and research, on the one hand, and business and industry, on the other, will be priority areas in the work of the Stifterverband in the coming year. We are just preparing a competition in which we will award prizes for particularly successful examples of exchange processes of all kinds.
After what has just been said, Professor Sturm and Professor Tass have truly earned their prize by crossing a border at least three times. May I now ask you to come up onto the stage for the presentation of the Schrödinger Prize certificate.
[Followed by reading out the text on the plaque, presentation of the plaque (1x) and of the printed certificates (2x) plus a small present from the Helmholtz Association (2x). Departure from the stage.]
