Complete success: two Clusters of Excellence for Würzburg
JMU has secured two Clusters of Excellence under the highly competitive Excellence Strategy funding programme - one in the field of quantum physics and one in the field of nucleic acid research. This means that the university is now eligible to apply for the title of ‘University of Excellence’.
University President Paul Pauli about the outcome
‘We are very proud of this outstanding success,’ said Paul Pauli, President of the University of Würzburg. ‘This is a great day not only for our university but for the city of Würzburg as a whole. The two projects demonstrate that Würzburg is a node for excellent research and one of the top players on the international stage. This further strengthens our resolve to pursue the title of University of Excellence with full force.’
In his video message (German only), the University President thanks everyone involved and, in particular, the members of the Cluster teams, who made this success possible. He emphasises the fierceness of the competition for funding under the Excellence Strategy and highlights the importance of the great collaboration of the Cluster teams across the different locations at Würzburg, Dresden and Munich: ‘We have the people, the infrastructure and the scientific know-how at our university to find answers to some of the big issues of our time.’
Cluster of Excellence NUCLEATE
The new research project NUCLEATE is dedicated to the innovative field of nucleic acid sciences and technologies. Its objective is to harness the potential of nucleic acids towards a new understanding of their role in biology and to pave the way into the field of nucleic acid medicine.
In the context of NUCLEATE, the University of Würzburg will work together with the two Munich universities LMU and TUM to pursue a nucleic-acid centred approach with a highly interdisciplinary team.
Cluster of Excellence ctd.qmat
The ctd.qmat – Complexity, Topology and Dynamics in Quantum Matter Cluster investigates novel quantum materials. Established in 2019, the research alliance is a joint project of the University of Würzburg and Dresden University of Technology and brings together more than 300 researchers from more than 30 countries.
ctd.qmat, then known as ‘ct.qmat’, was funded under the Excellence Strategy in the last funding period already.
On the way towards University of Excellence status
With these two Clusters, JMU can now also enter the race for the title of ‘University of Excellence’.
Universities of Excellence Funding Line
Having secured two Clusters of Excellence, JMU will now also apply for funding as a University of Excellence. Unlike the ‘Clusters of Excellence’ funding line, the ‘Universities of Excellence’ line focuses on the university as a whole, not on individual research projects.
The funding line is designed to develop whole German universities into top players on the international research stage. The overall institutional strategies developed in the process thus improve scientific performance of universities and create outstanding framework conditions for excellent research.
Excellence delivered by the JMU
JMU has been successful in all funding rounds of the German Excellence Competitions from the beginning in 2006:
Graduate School of Life Sciences (GSLS)
The University of Würzburg Graduate School of Life Sciences (GSLS) is one of the most successful graduate schools in the Excellence Initiative. In the 2006-2019 funding periods, it received around €18 million in funding. Currently, it is being funded by the Free State of Bavaria and the JMU. Currently home to more than 600 doctoral researchers in the natural sciences (more than 40% of whom are from abroad) and around 200 in medicine, the GSLS takes a highly personalised approach to training its doctoral researchers, giving them the opportunity to prepare for their chosen career paths in an autonomous manner and to gain the qualifications required to work in highly skilled leadership roles both in and outside academia. The GSLS provides doctoral training in the natural sciences and in medicine and offers the FOKUS Master Life Sciences Master’s programme as well as a ‘Postdoc Plus’ programme.
Rudolf Virchow Center
As one of only three research centres, the Rudolf Virchow Center (RVZ) for Integrative and Translational Bioimaging was selected in 2001 from among 80 applicants for a total of up to 12 years of funding.
Its excellence in research and its innovative structural approaches, including the interdisciplinary degree programme in Biomedicine and the ‘Virchow Graduate Programme’ for doctoral researchers, have made the Rudolf Virchow Center a model for the Clusters of Excellence in the Excellence Initiative. The maximum funding period for the RVZ ended in 2013. Since then, it has been funded by the Free State of Bavaria as a central research institution of the university.
