07. November 2005 Helmholtz Head Office
Speech by the President given at the 2005 Annual General Assembly (Translation)
Speech by the President of the Helmholtz Association Prof. Dr. Jürgen Mlynek given at the 2005 Annual General.
Translation
Speech by the President of the Helmholtz Association
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Mlynek
given at the 2005 Annual General Assembly
held in Berlin on 17 November 2005
Helmholtz and the Universities - No Half Measures
Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Guests from Politics, Business and Industry, Science and Research, and from the field of Culture,
I would like to welcome you all to the 2005 Annual General Assembly of the Helmholtz Association. It is my first Annual General Assembly as President of the Association, but first and above all I would personally like to take this opportunity to welcome Professor Walter Kröll. Dear Professor Kröll, I am delighted that my predecessor as President is attending this conference. It is a pleasure indeed to see your continuing interest in the development of the Helmholtz Association. In fact, the credit for the fact that the Association is able to set new and ambitious goals with confidence in 2005 must essentially go to the reform work you performed over recent years. We know that full well and wish to thank you for this.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Frank O. Gehry, the famous architect who designed the building we are in today once said: "Architecture must solve complex problems. We must understand and use technology, we must create buildings which are safe and dry, respectful of context and neighbors, and face all the myriad of issues of social responsibility, and even please the client".
If you exchange just a few of the words, you come up with the programme that we pursue in our research. We have to solve complex problems. To this end, we have to develop, understand and use high-performance, efficient technology. Of course, we do not, in the narrower sense, have to ensure that people can live in buildings that are safe and dry; but, in the broader sense, the creation of a better living environment certainly is the task we have been commissioned with. And we have to bear the context in mind as we go about our work. Because our actions take place in a network made up of science, society and industry. Naturally, the other partners in science and research also have a major role to play. They, above all, are our neighbours. We have to ask how our work interlinks with theirs and how we can work together to achieve better results than we could individually. And last but not least, we also face the challenge of having to "please the client". Just like the architects, we do not act for our own satisfaction or pleasure. In the competition taking place within the scientific community, we will be measured by the quality of our achievements and performance.
Helmholtz and the Universities, that is the key topic for our Annual General Assembly. So exactly what do we want to achieve together with the universities? Our motto here is definitely full of self-confidence: we do not do anything by halves, and certainly not together with the universities. And there is good reason for this: in their capacity as the core elements of the German science and research system, they are our foremost cooperation partners. Working together with them we can make German science and research future capable and can permanently strengthen it. Why? Because by achieving a new level of cooperation we can prevent the science and research system from becoming segmented and can overcome this segmentation. Because together we can better tap into and open up our great scientific potential. Because we can generate the critical mass required to position ourselves internationally in important research fields and to achieve outstanding results. And because by doing so we can raise our appeal for the best minds, can improve our options and opportunities, and can recruit and attract outstanding personalities - including from abroad - for science and research in Germany. In short, by working together, we can better succeed in making the most of the major opportunities that lie in our rich scientific research landscape. And in some cases, we can only achieve them together. Naturally, we have our own interests in mind when doing this. Because, as the saying goes, "real egoists do cooperate". We are hopefully not egoistic, but nor are we unselfish in our actions.
What are we doing to meet our "no half measures" claim? Our cooperation is built on a sound and sustainable foundation that has developed over many years. Today, some 200 of the department heads at our research centres have been jointly appointed with universities. You can imagine how immense the teaching load is that our researchers perform at the universities. Helmholtz Centres, Ladies and Gentlemen, are actively involved in 30% of the collaborative research centres funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), in 63% of the DFG-funded priority programmes, and in 20% of the graduate research schools established at universities. This fact, as confirmed by the DFG, delivers an outstanding participation rate. In addition, some 3,200 doctoral students are being trained at Helmholtz, always with the involvement of a university. And we ourselves have introduced two new cooperative models. Firstly, the Virtual Institutes, where outstanding groups from the Helmholtz Association and the universities bring together and concentrate their respective expertise and resources. We are currently investing around 45m euros to establish 65 of these virtual institutes. 162 academic groups from 51 universities are taking part; around two-thirds of our funding goes to these university partners. In no way can that be called a "half measure". The second model involves joint Young Investigators Groups whose leaders get the opportunity to pursue their own research goals at an early stage in their careers. They are additionally integrated into the universities will academic rights and duties. More than 30 such groups exist, by the end of the year they will number around 50, and we have set ourselves the goal of raising the figure to 100 over the coming years. These bare facts and figures naturally only document the volume; but they do also show that the qualitative standard that we expect from the cooperation is built on a real and tangible basis in practice.
Where does the development potential for cooperation with the universities lie? On the one hand, we have to continue driving forward the formation of regional and thematic research clusters, have to develop strategic alliances in which universities and non-university research institutions combine and concentrate their resources and intensify the process of transferring findings into industrial practice. This serves to form core areas and to advance the universities' profile building, which happens to be one of the goals set by the federal government's Initiative on Excellence. The German Research Foundation received 157 outline proposals from the universities on the creation of such Clusters of Excellence, and I am proud that Helmholtz Centres are actively involved in 40 of these, i.e. in more than a quarter of them. The second field in which we have to continue investing is the joint promotion of young researchers and scientists. Here, too, we have to do more together. To strengthen the backbone of scientific research and, in accordance with our vision, to ensure that we remain an attractive option for the best and most talented around the world and, at the same time, qualify the outstanding specialists that our country needs.
What do we expect of our partners on the university side? We need strong partners who enter into practicable agreements with us. We need satisfiable partners who are able to negotiate as equals when drawing up strategic alliances with non-university research institutions and are able to reliably fulfil their part. The prerequisite for this is the provision of guaranteed and sufficient medium-term funding, for example, on the basis of university agreements. We need partners capable of action who do not endlessly discuss their decisions in committees and who do not kill these off in consultations held in a spirit of collective irresponsibility. We need competent and open partners who recognise that our Helmholtz researchers are also able to make decisive contributions towards strengthening the teaching provided at the universities and who courageously and unreservedly grasp this opportunity. This applies in particular to the young researchers and scientists: the leaders of our joint Helmholtz-Universities Young Investigators Groups, for example, should all - without exception and not only in individual cases - be integrated into the universities as professors with fixed-term contracts, e.g. as junior professors. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have enough insider knowledge of the university world as a university teacher and former university president to be able to properly assess the high standard of the demands made in this catalogue. But if we want to make the most of the opportunity for German science and research, an opportunity that lies in establishing a new level of cooperation, then this will be more than just a simple Saturday stroll for all of those involved. Rather, it will be a rigorous mountain hike full of rocky obstacles.
What demands and standards do we set ourselves? The Helmholtz Association mission is to perform top-rate research in order to contribute to solving the grand challenges which face science, society and industry. How and from where will we get our energy in 50 years' time? How can we protect ourselves against new diseases that spread quickly in a global world? How can we guarantee mobility, also for coming generations? How can we warn people all around the world sooner of natural disasters, how can we protect them better and, in the event of a disaster, how can we help the victims more quickly? Our researchers must focus their work on major questions like these that are faced by modern societies. We will be measured by the quality of our answers to these questions of the future: by our ability to explain the fundamental contexts of complex systems, whether it be the climate, transport or infection. And by our ability to develop solutions from our findings and insights that serve to secure the quality of life today and for future generations. In short, our mission is to perform applications-inspired basic research of the very highest level.
What qualifies us to take on this mission? Quite simply, our ability to think in major categories in a way that no other German research organisation can and to apply our competence on a grand scale. Our Association stands out through its diversity of disciplines. Working from this diversity, we must make even stronger use of our competence in researching complex systems. We are rightly proud of our long-term strategy for the major research fields in which we work. At the same time, however, we have to prove that we are also flexible enough to be able to identify new, highly-promising and important topics at an early stage, to quickly take these on and to pursue them purposefully and with courage. We, as the Helmholtz Association, demonstrate time and time again that we have the competence and resources with which to master major projects. The tsunami early warning system for the Indian Ocean, which is currently being established under the lead of a Helmholtz Centre, namely the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Germany's national research centre for geosciences, is a prime example of this work. Another is the novel x-ray laser X-FEL, which we are creating at our Helmholtz Centre DESY in Hamburg with participation by European partners. This facility will provide the European and international scientific community with opportunities for carrying out structural research in the very smallest dimensions, something that researchers could, so far, only dream of. Competence in the realisation of the major projects of the scientific community, this is what we also want to demonstrate by working to create a site for a European high-performance computing centre in Jülich, a project to and in which we are emphatically engaged. These very different projects all have a common denominator. We always have partners on board. Because it has become apparent that we are particularly successful when we cooperate. This is why we have to further expand our collaboration with strong partners. And I'd even go one step further. Our national mission absolutely obliges us to take on the role of pioneer, initiator and architect for major partnerships and strategic alliances. And we owe it to our identity to show that we don't do anything by halves here.
Ladies and Gentlemen, to fulfil our mission we set high standards for ourselves and our partners. To meet these, however, we have to rely on appropriate frameworks. The Helmholtz Association today adopted a position paper with demands for the new government. The fact that the grand coalition plans to honour the Pact for Research and Innovation and to additionally increase the level of research and development funding to 3% of the gross domestic product by 2010 deserves our recognition. In view of the difficult budgetary situation, this represents an effort that we academics and researchers know to appreciate full well. Working from this basis, we see four action fields as priority areas: firstly, politics must resolutely continue with its initiated withdrawal from exerting detailed control over research institutions and universities. Secondly, transparency, competition and autonomy must be the undisputed guidelines for the wide-ranging self-government and control of the science and research system. Thirdly, we must additionally continue to have an attractive and performance-based salary system to make German science and research internationally competitive. Moreover, science and research need stronger incentives to make their findings available for to be transferred into application and practice. And last but not least we also depend on reliable promises to expand and finance the resources made available for a highly-modern research infrastructure. Because globally unique large-scale facilities are absolutely indispensable to the international competitiveness and appeal of German science and research.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have spoken about the hard and demanding business of research, about our ambition and about the high goals that we have to achieve together with our partners. But there is something else as well. An expert in the field of architecture once described Frank O. Gehry's building with the following words. I quote: "Delight breaks through constantly; there are no gloomy Gehry buildings. One cannot think of anything he has done that does not make one smile."
We, too, would like to make you smile. And so I invite you to enjoy the building's exceptional architecture and to take pleasure in the excellent science that Helmholtz researchers will present to you. I am sure that quality not only convinces; one can also take pleasure and delight from quality. This goes for research as much as it does for architecture.
Thank you very much.
I would now like to announce a fascinating speaker. Nobody is restructuring the university more radically than he, wrote the ZEIT. He is more controversial than any of the other Länder science ministers. Presumably, because he takes on practically each and every "hot potato" that exists in the field higher education policy. He asks for and expects the universities to engage in a process of sweeping change. He battles for the resolute formation of regional focuses. He demands flexible and time-limited research focuses. And these are just a few examples. I am delighted to be able to welcome Hamburg's Senator for Science and Research Jörg Dräger as our guest today. Mr. Dräger, we look forward to learning about your ideas on how German science and research must develop and on what role the universities and their non-university partners can play in this process.
