Collaborative Research Centresof the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

CONTENTS: An Ideal Setting for Research ❙ The Final Play-Off ❙ Commotion at the Bottom of the
Ocean ❙ Plenty of Room at the Bottom ❙ Nature’s Repair Shop ❙ Learning and Forgetting ❙ Dangerous Shape­
shifters ❙ Exploring Limbo ❙ Archaeology of Remembrance ❙ The Mystery of Properties ❙ An SFB Pulls People Together ❙ SFBs: Essential for Basic Research and Transfer

Edi torial

The Power of Networking: DFG Collaborative Research Centres

An
Ideal Setting
for Research
By Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker

A

flash of inspiration during asolitary walk in the woods
is as much a part of research as
tireless laboratory investigationand teamwork over many years.
The most fascinating research
topics can often be found where
different
disciplines
intersect; dialogue between experts
creates novelty. Collaboration
within a network can be stimulating and fertile when based ona well-conceived, interesting andexciting concept. To promote thiscooperative approach in German
academia, the Deutsche Forsch­
ungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German
Research Foundation), in addition
to funding individual projects,
offers programmes for coordinatednetwork-based research. Collaborative Research Centres (Sonderforschungsbereiche, SFBs) enable
scientists and academics to form
interdisciplinary communities thatengage in long-term research, forup to twelve years, on a jointly
selected topic. The key objective
is to promote excellent research

on an ambitious topic by focusing
resources at the host university.
A Collaborative Research Centre
shapes a university’s profile andbuilds cooperative structures that
last. It is an excellent setting foryoung researchers. The integration of research institutions outside
the university fosters networking
in research and enriches the SFB.
As prominent beacons of science,
Collaborative Research Centres
substantially enhance the competitive quality and reputation ofGerman research in the international arena.
Since this funding instrument
was introduced in 1968, its topics,
structure and scope have continuously evolved. Today the DFG
supports a total of 276 SFBs withmore than 400 million euros per
year. Now as then, the core of the
programme consists of locationbased Collaborative ResearchCentres, in which scientists at aparticular university collaborate
with research institutions basedin the same region. Close coop-eration is accomplished mosteasily in geographic proximity.
Seminal ideas are often born when
doctoral researchers from various
disciplines chat over afternoon
tea. Some topics, however, defy
geographic restriction. Thanks tomodern means of communication(and the researchers’ wanderlust), productive collaborationis possible even across larger
distances. This is where the Trans­
regional Collaborative ResearchCentre programme comes in,which was introduced in 1999. It
allows researchers from up to threelocations to join forces, complement each others’ expertise, andestablish new core research areasat their respective universities.
The inception of a Collaborative
Research Centre is preceded by astrict selection process. Fewer thanhalf of all proposals succeed. A
group of internationally renowned
experts visits the location for twodays to review the proposal. Thena committee made up primarily of
researchers compares it againstnumerous competing proposals todecide whether the DFG shouldfund it. What are the selection
criteria? The topic chosen by
the research network should beinteresting and current, and eachindividual project has to relate
to it. The network as a whole, as
well as each individual project,must be scientifically convincing.
Funding goes to those who havedone relevant groundwork andcan present interesting new ideas
and good proposals for implementation. All the disciplines represented in a research network
should pursue a joint approachand present specific strategies forcollaboration. To assume the roleof coordinator, there should be a
persuasive researcher personality
who can lead the community ina knowledgeable, integrative anddecisive manner. After four years,
the network is once again visitedby the DFG: a group of reviewers
examines the results and either
approves or denies continued
funding. Particularly outstanding
projects may be funded for up to
twelve years.
And what happens then? A
Collaborative Research Centre
shapes a university’s profile:
it can strengthen a previously
existing core research area, or it
may establish a new focus. Eitherway, personnel policies at the
departments involved are geared
to the joint project, and valuable
research equipment is purchased
for shared use. This helps makethe most of scarce resources
and achieve top-level research
results, even while building cooperative structures that outlast thefunding period. Another special
strength of Collaborative ResearchCentres is the promotion of young
researchers. Junior scientists
and academics find excellent
conditions for research here, thefreedom to realise their ideas, aclimate of dialogue and cooperation, as well as the support, advice
and example of more experienced
colleagues. By being assigned tolead projects, young researchers
are allowed and required to takeon responsibility. Independent
junior research groups within
Collaborative Research Centres

are prime examples of how the
DFG promotes early independence.
Gender equality in scienceand academia is a major concern
of DFG research funding. The
percentage of women in researchis especially low in Germany anddwindles significantly from thegraduate to the doctoral to theprofessorial level. To promote
female researchers in particular,
the DFG has made gender equality
a key feature of its SFB programme.
Each proposal is reviewed very
closely for participation of women.
Universities and project leaders
must demonstrate their commitment to gender equality and aresupported by the DFG for taking
appropriate actions. Researchers“Basic research isthe core of the SFB
programme, but looking
at practical applications
is also important.”
should have the opportunity tosuccessfully combine career andfamily, and this entails the availability of child care that can accommodate researchers’ unconventional schedules.
Basic research forms the core of
the SFB programme. But looking atpractical applications of researchfindings is also important andworthwhile. Most frequently inthe engineering sciences, but also
in the life and natural sciences,
SFB researchers safeguard theirintellectual property with patents.
In cooperation with industry,
results are developed further, andparticularly promising ideas may
even become the basis of small
start-ups. The DFG specificallysupports such developments. In
the Transfer Project component of
the programme, the DFG systematically promotes the transition toapplications. Together with one ormore industry partners, findings areturned into practical solutions evenduring the Collaborative ResearchCentre’s funding period. Industry
partners contribute their own

financial share. Issues regarding
intellectual property rights andacademic freedom of publication
are settled by contract. The interplay of Collaborative ResearchCentre and Transfer Project is mostsuccessful when insights gainedin practice are fed back to the
SFB, helping to advance researcheven further. The most importanttransfer, however, is the “braintransfer”: scientists who train in
Collaborative Research Centres
bring outstanding knowledge andskills to their future jobs.
International cooperation isanother key feature of Collaborative Research Centres. Teamsconsist of researchers frommultiple countries. Each SFB
has an international visiting
researcher programme. It is agiven that findings are presented
and discussed at international
conferences. Contacts are intensified during visits abroad lasting
several weeks or months. This
gives especially young researchersa chance to be inspired not only
by other investigative methods,
but also by other personalities
and cultures. Research partners
working on their own projects inother countries may be included
in a network if they contributeexpertise that is not available atthe SFB location.
New research methods andfindings are shared among experts
as a matter of course. It is equallyimportant, but perhaps more difficult, for researchers to present
their activities to the generalpublic. The DFG supports suchendeavours as well and provides
SFBs with funding for public relations. Target groups might be
students, parents and teachers, orrepresentatives from business andgovernment. Examples of suchinitiatives include lab open house
weeks and “Children’s University”, films and exhibitions, andtrade show participation.
For a list of Collaborative
Research Centres funded by the
DFG, visit our website (www.dfg.
de/en), where I’m sure you’ll see a
research topic that interests you.
Prof. Dr. Ernst-Ludwig
Winnacker was the Presidentof the DFG from 1998 to 2006.
Observations at an SFB Review

The Final Play-OffHamburg is in the grip of soccer
fever. This afternoon thegroup game Italy versus the Czech
Republic will be held at Volkspark
Stadium. But on Bundesstraße, at
the Centre for Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, people aren’t
paying much attention to the FIFA
World Cup today. The scientists
of SFB 512 “Cyclones and theNorth Atlantic Climate System”
are fighting to make it into theirown final round: SFB coordinator
Burghard Brümmer and four of hiscolleagues are about to present
their research findings and plans
for the future in order to apply fora fourth funding period.
SFB 512 has been in existence since 1998. As is still practice today, the researchers from
Hamburg, prior to submitting
their initial proposal, had met withpeers in their field and DFG representatives for an informal consultation to introduce their concept.
“We came back from this consultation feeling confident that ourfield of research is potential SFB
material,” Brümmer remembers.
Proposal submission was followedby an official review in Hamburg,
which led to a recommendation.
The Grants Committee endorsed
the recommendation and SFB 512
began its work.
Since then, the researchers
in Hamburg have successfully
passed three reviews. But thisdoesn’t mean that routine iscreeping in. Applying for the final
funding period is by no means lesswork than the previous proposals– after all, each individual project,
each postgraduate position, eachnew piece of equipment must be
convincingly justified. Failingthat, planned projects may not beapproved, which occurred in theprevious review.
The team is working hard to
keep this from happening again.
They have shared many in-depth
discussions in which they zeroedin on the issues that really matter –the results they want to achievein their joint research, a realisticschedule, necessary modifications
to their current structure, gapsthat need to be closed, and last
but not least, whether eachproject truly supports the big
picture. “This is exactly where
the added value of an SFB comesin,” says Dieter Etling, one of thereviewers, who teaches theoreticalmeteorology at the University of
Hannover. Equally important,according to Etling, is the question of whether the scientists
involved can point to a publication
track record that promises highquality for the proposed projects.
Burghard Brümmer is well aware“Each individual
project must support
the big picture.”of this: “If your proposal talks thetalk but you don’t walk the walk,then you’re not credible.” It took
just under a year to draft the reportand renewal proposal – a volume
of over 400 pages, which wasthen presented to the DFG and
its reviewers. “If you can describe
your project plausibly and intelligibly, you’re already ahead of thegame,” says Etling.
On this Thursday morning, the
SFB’s research assistants are also
gathering in room 22. For many of
the younger ones, it is the first timethey experience an event like this,and their faces look serious; after
all, their very careers are at stake
here. Burghard Brümmer and his
associates show grace under pressure, cordially shaking hands with
their scientific peers who are here
to review the proposal.
The fact that reviewers andreviewees know each other does
not make this an easy home gamefor Brümmer’s team. The DFG’s
officers for scientific affairs hand-pick the expert reviewers, taking
into consideration not only theirproven expertise but also making
sure, as much as possible, thatno bias of any kind will taint theexperts’ judgement; in this case,none of them may be affiliated with
the University of Hamburg. Care isalso taken to avoid that a negativeevaluation can be used to harm ascientific competitor or, conversely,that potentially weak projects areoverlooked out of sheer sympathy
for the research area. The moredisciplines are represented in a
research team, the more diverse
the review team. In the end,
however, reviewers should not justadd up their individual opinions,but rather come to a joint conclusion regarding the merits of theoverriding research objective.
Reviewers are joined by two DFG
representatives – one with and one
without special expertise in thesubject matter at hand – whose job
is to ensure fairness and transparency, and to report about the review
process to the Grants Committee,
which ultimately approves ordenies funding.
Burghard Brümmer begins his
presentation: “The North Atlantic
is right at the front door of Europe
and has an immediate influenceon our climate.” Hot summers or
stormy winters – Europe’s mild but
variable weather is directly related
to the North Atlantic climate
system. Following this presentation, the project leaders talk about
the ways in which they examinecomplex interactions within andbetween the ocean, the atmosphere, the sea ice, and the land
surface. They are what cause theweather to change – from day today, from year to year, from decade
to decade.
Exactly how all these processes
are interconnected – also in a global
context – is still not clear. Using
model calculations and field experiments, the scientists in Hamburg
want to get a better understanding.

SFB 512

The SFB’s eleven project segments
pursue one common objective: topredict these processes and theirprobable effects as soon as a pattern
has been identified. Forecasts for
the El Niño phenomenon in the
Pacific Ocean, which are alreadyquite successful today, serve as amodel.
To persuade the reviewers,
Brümmer brings up additional
arguments: new scenarios fromthe United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) are to be included in theplanned model calculations, as
are new satellite data. In addition,
Hamburg-based sea ice researchis expected to make a significant
contribution to the International
Polar Year 2007.
The reviewers do not seem todoubt the relevance of the research
topic itself. Whenever they follow
up with critical questions, they
focus on organisational, methodical, or scientific details. For
instance, they want to know what
hypotheses the proposed fieldstudies are based on, and whether
the final funding period of three
years will suffice to analyse theresulting data. They also probe theexact meaning of certain predictions, for example that calculationsof small-scale aerosol effects canbe applied to large-scale dimensions. And again and again, theykeep asking whether it can beassured that the data collected by
the SFB will remain available toresearchers beyond its duration. Is
this a good sign?
The project leaders join the
lively discussion. And in the group
talks that follow, even the doctoral
researchers face tough questions.
They have been involved in the
preparations from the beginningand helped design the posters
that explain each project throughimages and texts. It is apparent
that each individual here contributes to the whole.
After the reviewers gather for
their first closed meeting in theafternoon, the game goes into its
second half the following morning.
University president Jürgen Lüthje
talks about the significance of
SFB 512 for his institution, whereclimate and marine research has
become a core research areawith international visibility. This
SFB has helped the University of
Hamburg to focus its expertise:“Three years ago we were able
to combine the University’s Centre
for Marine and Climate Researchand the Max Planck Institutefor Meteorology into the Centre
for Marine and Atmospheric
Sciences,” says Lüthje, addingthat the Hamburg-based German
Climate Computing Centre is alsopart of the SFB, as are the GKSS
Research Center in Geesthacht
and the Alfred Wegener Institutefor Polar and Marine Research inBremerhaven. A beacon for thepromotion of young researchers
is the Max Planck International
Research School, where the SFB’s
junior scientists are active.
After the SFB researchers
field a second round of questions
and the reviewers hold a second
closed meeting, the moment of
truth arrives at about 1 pm. Whenthe review team’s spokesperson
announces to coordinator Burghard
Brümmer that the experts haveagreed on a positive recommendation, a wave of relief can be felt
sweeping over the room. Only
minor cuts are being proposed
regarding consumables and somepostgraduate positions.
The main reason given for therecommendation is that the SFB’s
research programme looks beyond
the three-year funding period.
“These colleagues have eliminatedweak spots, convincingly made thecase for three new projects, andplausibly laid out how they plan toharvest and develop the fruits of
their research,” says Dieter Etlinglater, reflecting on his impressions.
Meanwhile, Burghard Brümmer
can’t wait to tell his associates thegood news. Although the ultimate decision lies with the Grants
Committee, the reviewers’ recommendation is a good enoughreason for them to celebrate –even without the World Cup.
Marion Kälke

Sea ice transport from the Arctic
Ocean, especially via Fram Strait
between Greenland and Spitsbergen,is largely responsible for the North
Atlantic freshwater balance.
Volatiles and Fluids in Subduction Zones

Commotion at the Bottomof the OceanA

SFB 574s the German research vessel
Meteor ploughs the waves off
Costa Rica and Nicaragua, there isincessant bubbling, rumbling andcrackling far below the water surface. As a consequence, frequenttremors shake the ocean floor aswell as the land. In 1972 an earthquake left 250,000 people homeless and 6,000 dead in Managua.
In 1992 an earthquake triggered atsunami, with waves over 10 metreshigh breaking over the coast. A
belt of volcanoes stretches acrossNicaragua, including three highly
explosive volcanoes near Managuathat have been active within thelast few thousand years. Again andagain, the researchers of SFB 574“Volatiles and Fluids in Subduction Zones: Climate Feedback and
Trigger Mechanisms for Natural
Disasters”, based at the Universityof Kiel’s Leibniz Institute of Marine
Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR), put out
to sea to get to the bottom of theprocesses occurring at the ocean
floor. Such a cruise is described in
the richly illustrated book Expedition Tiefsee (Deep Sea Expedition)
published by the SFB.
The research region is the Central American subduction zone.
The surface of the Earth consistsof plates that drift on our planet’s
viscous mantle like floats. At thewest coast of Central America, theoceanic Cocos Plate collides with
the Caribbean Plate and, due to its
higher density, sinks beneath it; inother words, it subducts. It is easy
to imagine the drama that happensat this juncture: enormous massesof rock are compressed, squeezed,transformed and broken; enormous amounts of seismic energy
are released in earthquakes, which
can cause slumping/sliding of thecontinental margin and tsunamis;and explosive volcanic eruptions
threaten many of the major cities
of Central America.
“A key to these processes iswater,” explains Klaus Wallmann,expert for marine biogeochemistry.
He is not referring to the ocean but
to the at least equally vast amountof water that has penetrated theocean floor. It is chemically boundin mantle rock and in sediment thathas settled on the bottom of thesea. As the oceanic plate moves
beneath the continental shelf,
it transports this water. Caught
between the proverbial rock andhard place, the subducting Cocos
Plate is continuously wrung out
and drained. The fluids that escape– liquids enriched with volatilegases such as methane and carbon
dioxide – trigger a variety of complex processes on the seafloor.
One of the SFB’s specialties are
so-called mud mounds which formon the continental slope due todisturbances in the sediment layers. The pressure of the Caribbean
Plate on the submerging oceanic
plate, combined with a temperature of about 150 degrees centigrade, alters the structure of thewater-rich clay minerals, squeezA volcano exhales water vapour andother gases through fumaroles (gasvents). SFB researcher Kristin Garofalo
samples these emissions to better
understand their composition.



ing out their water. This water
seeps upward through the crust of
the continental slope and liquefies
the overlying sediment, causing
it to rise rapidly: gas-laden mud
shoots to the surface and throws up
bulging mounds.
At the boundary between theplates, the water that escapes theclay minerals serves as a lubricant, preventing severe tremors
from occurring by movement of
the down going plate. But further
down along the edge of the plate,where the clay minerals havealready been drained, that lubricant is lacking. This allows stressto build, which may result in earthquakes. “Our theory is that there’s
a direct connection between earthquakes and the dehydration of clay
minerals,” says Timothy Reston, a
Briton who specialises in marine
geodynamics. All the fluid releaseoccurs between the quake epicentres and the deep sea trench,where the oceanic and continental plates intersect. The hypothesisthat earthquakes immediately follow dewatering has been aroundfor a while. “But by determining
where the water is released in relation to the earthquakes, we found
the first solid piece of evidence thatbacks it up.”
While mud volcanoes are themain source of deep water, inactive
deep-sea volcanoes also contribute
their share. “The seamounts off thecoast of Central America formed
an ancient Galapagos Archipelago
about 15 million years ago, which
was located where the Galapagos
Islands are presently located,” says
SFB coordinator Kaj Hoernle, an
American scientist who studies volcanism. “Movement of the Cocos
Plate carried them to the Costa
Rican margin. Along the way they
were eroded and subsided beneathsea level.” As they underthrust thecontinental edge in the course of

SFB 574

Subduction zone off Costa Rica: Clearly visible are several seamounts
and – on the other side of the deep sea trench – scars that were left
by such underground volcanoes when the Cocos Plate submerged.

subduction, they compress andoversteepen the continental slope,causing faulting, fracturing andslumping, which in turn lead toearthquakes and tsunamis. It isalso along these structures that fluids and gases escape into the sea.
The most important gas is methane. It forms within sediments
as microorganisms decompose
organic material, but also in depthsof several kilometres at high temperatures. Methane is a powerfulgreenhouse gas which, per molecule, contributes about 25 times
more to climate change than carbon dioxide. In the ocean’s natural
cycle, bacteria and archaea work
as a filter that keeps this methanefrom entering the atmosphere. They
use the gas that is dissolved in thefluids for their metabolism and inturn provide nutrients for mussels
and tube worms. And yet anothermechanism keeps the methane incheck. At the bottom of the ocean,
where temperatures are low andpressure is high, water freezes andencloses the gas molecules in tiny
ice cages. These gas hydrates areprimarily found along continental
slopes and in regions with permanent ice. However, when fluids
migrate to the surface, they heatup the surroundings and thaw thegas hydrates. Methane released inthis manner is also a vital resource
for microorganisms.
In particularly sensitive areas,
destabilised gas hydrates can trigger slumps and thereby tsunamis. “It doesn’t happen the way
Frank Schätzing describes it in
his novel The Swarm,” says Wallmann, probably for the hundredthtime, and laughs. Still, that thriller
made the Kiel-based researchers

famous and actually explained
many things quite well. “Theworms that cause the disaster inthe book are Schätzing’s invention
though.” Adds geologist Warner
Brückmann, “Humans, on theother hand, might indeed attack
the gas hydrates in the long run
by causing climate changes.” For
instance, if the water temperature
at the bottom of the ocean rises by
three degrees, about 80 percent of
the gas hydrates would melt. Not
only would this trigger natural disasters, but the escaping methane
would also further increase global
temperatures.
For 15 years now, the researchers from Kiel have been surveying, mapping, sampling, analysing
and modelling the coast of Central
America. “But it’s mostly thanks
to the establishment of this SFB in
2001 that we’ve been able to integrate our efforts so successfully asa team,” explains Wallmann. When
talking to these scientists from avariety of disciplines, it becomesquite clear that they are all in thesame boat. The SFB is uniqueinternationally in that it is the only
programme that studies the entire
subduction system (marine and terrestrial) within a single, large-scale
project, bringing together researchers from multiple disciplines at asingle university, according toHoernle. The SFB has also inspired
other international research activities, including two new ocean drilling proposals to drill into the earthquake generating (seismogenic)zone of the Central American subduction system and into mounds
formed by fluid venting.
Of course, holistic research needs
to consider the entire geographic

zone, including the volcanic belt
on shore. The latter is the focus ofArmin Freundt’s research. By looking at a volcano’s type, age andsize, he determines its past behaviour in order to draw conclusions
regarding possible future eruptions
and their severity. As is the casewith earthquakes and tsunamis,
only early warnings can save lives
when it comes to eruptions.
Volcanoes develop from magma– rock molten in the Earth’s mantle
and crust, which erupts as lava or as
an explosive mix of lava and gases.
Mantle rock melts under extreme
pressure and at temperatures ofover 1,200 degrees; the temperature of the mantle wedge above
the subducting plate is below its
melting point. This is where water
comes in: “Water lowers the melting point. It’s as if you put salt
on ice,” explains Freundt. Onceagain, the cause can be found in
the dewatering of minerals, in thiscase hydrous olivine known as serpentine. Fluid is released at depthsof over 100 kilometres as the oceanic plate submerges into the mantle and heats up in the process.
Whatever brews at the bottom will
be hurled out at the top. Along withmagma, the volcanoes spit out not
only water but also the greenhousegas carbon dioxide, as well as sulphur dioxide, which has a cooling
effect on the atmosphere because
it helps form clouds that reflectsunrays back into outer space. The
explosiveness of magma depends
on the amount and type of volatiles(gases) it contains.
There is still a lot left to do: “We
don’t know why quakes off Nicaragua trigger tsunamis and those off
Costa Rica don’t,” says seismology
expert Ernst Flüh. The team also
has expanded its research region to
include the Chilean coast. Different from Central America, where
the Cocos Plate eats into the Caribbean Plate from underneath,one finds in Chile an accretionary
wedge, formed from sediment thatthe subducting plate has pushed
along and accumulated. “The transition from one variant to another,which we find off Chile within asmall area, allows us to better study
the system as a whole,” explains
Flüh.
Marion Kälke
Nanoparticles from the Gas Phase

Plenty of Roomat the BottomWchemists, as well as electrical andmechanical engineers, work together hand in hand.
“’From the Gas Phase’ – thesewords already indicate the interdisciplinary approach of our joint“We reverse theusual research anddevelopment chain.”research,” Lorke remarks. The SFB
owes its foundation to the foresightof mechanical engineers, who realised that the extremely tiny dust
particles that occur in combustion
processes as unwanted side products have something in common
with the structures that their colleagues in the natural scienceswere investigating for their moreor less exotic properties – namely
their nanometre scale. And once
these researchers realised that they
had lots to talk about, not just as
colleagues but also as scientists,they quickly agreed to join forces
and look for new insights in thisunexplored territory of traditional
research. Further partners and allies were found, the SFB was proposed, reviewed, funded, and finally established in Duisburg in
1999.
The objective of SFB 445 andits 16 projects is to investigate,
through experiments, computer
simulations and model calculations,the formation of nanoparticles in
the gas phase; to characterise themin terms of their morphology as
well as their physical and chemical
behaviour; and to elucidate how
SFB 445

herever we look today, nanotechnology and nanoscience are beginning to penetrate
our everyday lives. Almost daily,
new findings lead to novel productideas, as creative scientists and engineers in companies and research
institutions advance the necessary
technologies. “In this environment,
through strategic and skilful hiring
policy, the Universität DuisburgEssen has developed into an important nanotechnology player,”says physicist Axel Lorke, who six
years ago moved from Munich toDuisburg, where he enjoys “fantastic working conditions” andnow represents the SFB 445 as its
coordinator. Under the common
theme of “Nanoparticles from theGas Phase: Formation, Structure,
Properties”, an unusually diverse
crowd, comprising physicists and

100 nmUnderneath the catalytic nanoparticles of gold – the little beads at the tips of the whiskers as seen through a scanningelectron microscope – nanowires consisting of compound semiconductor material grow on a silicon substrate.
a particle’s structure relates to its
properties. “In some ways our SFB
reverses the usual development
chain, which normally starts in thebasic sciences and then makes thetransition to engineering,” says
Axel Lorke. “In our case it starts
out with the particles. Only after
the engineers have produced thenanomaterials – which happens inproject area A of our SFB – can the“Material combinations
normally considered
impossible become reality.”
physicists and chemists in project
area B characterise and analysethem for their new and often surprising properties.” Examples include light-emitting particles thatconsist of silicon, the very material
which the entire modern computer industry is based on, but which
has so far been unsuitable for optoelectronic applications; or magnetic particles, which self-organise
into chains or ordered layers, as if
moved by an invisible hand. In theend though, everything falls into
place again in the SFB 445, as theengineers in project area C turnthe newly found properties intonovel applications.
Nanoparticles are characterisedby their reduced size in all three
dimensions. This is why scientists
often refer to their “quasi-nondimensionality” and their enormous surface-to-volume ratio. Thismeans that, unlike with “normal”
solids, interfacial effects dominate
and quantum phenomena occur,
which can be used technologicallyin electrical, magnetic, or opticalcomponents with entirely new orcustomised properties. An example for this kind of customisation
within SFB 445 is the developmentof ultrasensitive gas sensors, basedon tin oxide nanoparticles.
In 2004, Franz-Josef Tegude
joined the research team to makeuse of the nanoparticles producedin the SFB and realise innovative
concepts for microelectronic components. “For example, we try toemulate typical transistor functions
using nanoparticles,” he says andpulls out an electron microscope
image that shows three thin spikes
on a more or less flat surface. Looking closely, one notices a smallround cap on each tip. “These arenanoparticles made of gold,” explains Tegude. “What’s so great
about it is that these gold dots act
as catalysts and make sure that,in our usual process of metal-organic vapour-phase epitaxy, solidmaterial grows right beneath them– and only there – in the presenceof gaseous semiconductor source
materials, even at a relatively low
working temperature.” The microscopic image shows clearly how
elongated structures, tipped with
nano-gold, stretch vertically upward toward the substrate surface.
“They’re called whiskers”, says
Tegude, “and they grow into wiresof up to several hundred nanometres length while measuring only
ten nanometres in diameter. They
obviously form in a self-organisingprocess, which we gradually learn
to understand within the SFB.”
These super-thin wires consistof indium arsenide (InAs) or indium antimonide (InSb) and growon a silicon base – a combinationof materials normally considered
impossible by experts, because
their crystals have different lattice
constants (distances between atom
positions), which has fatal consequences: if the materials are deposited onto a large area, mechanical tensions arise, which sooner orlater cause the growing film to tear.
“It’s one reason why compound
semiconductors haven’t been able
to play much of a role in microelectronics,” comments Tegude. “Butsince our whiskers only grow locally, we get around this problem,
and along the way we happen toconquer the third dimension for thedevelopment of components.”“Nanowires are a prime example of our multifaceted work”, says
Lorke, as he describes the enthusiastic atmosphere at the SFB. Of
course, it is not easy to find a common language between all the subject areas involved; different mindsets and terminologies need to beunderstood among the different
disciplines. For this purpose, SFB
researchers gather for informal aswell as for scheduled meetings,

such as the weekly discussions attheorist Dietrich Wolf’s office. Oneof the challenges here is to comprehend the electrical resistanceof a thin layer of nanoparticles.
The issue only appears to be easy
– after all, textbook formulas developed for macroscopic physics fail atthe nanoscale, where current is nolonger a continuous flow. Rather it
is carried by individual electrons,
which on the one hand behave
like bouncy ping-pong balls, andon the other like enigmatic quantum objects. A stimulating topic forexperimental and theoretical discussions, in which, quite naturally,
undergraduates participate just as
much as the SFB’s postdocs anddoctoral researchers.
“We try to show our young researchers the importance of thinking outside the boundaries of their“Textbook formulas frommacroscopic physics do not
apply at the nanoscale.”own subjects,” the colleagues
agree – and those aren’t just empty
words. A case in point: the SFB has
established a cooperation with the
University of Minnesota’s IGERT
programme (Integrative Graduate
Education and Research Traineeship) and thus enables its young
scientists to travel to Minneapolis to share results and know-how
with their colleagues and to learn
about the research environment in
the United States.
The SFB’s annual retreat also
plays an important role, as theentire SFB crew goes away to a
secluded cabin in the mountains
for one week. Here, professors andresearch assistants report on theirprojects, but also students talkabout their graduate work within
the SFB. “That’s when we’re awayfrom it all and fully focused to pickeach other’s brains – without picking on each other,” says Lorke. “It’sa great exercise in communication,
especially for the younger people.
And it’s not unheard of that ideas
for new interdisciplinary projects
come up when we talk over a beerin the evening.”
Dieter BesteCells into Tissues

Nature’s Repair ShopA

Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics

skinned knee isn’t all that bad– the wound will heal withina few days. A damaged liver willregain part of its function within a
few weeks. Donating blood is not
a problem, because the loss willquickly be replenished. Still, ourbody’s own ability to repair damage is limited. No one can makea lost arm grow back. The axolotl, however, can. If this Mexican
salamander has, for example, its
tail cut off, it will restore it completely – backbone, nerves, muscles, blood vessels and all.
“The axolotl is the king ofregeneration, and there’s a lot we
can learn from it,” says Gerhard
Ehninger, coordinator of SFB 655“Cells into Tissues: Stem Celland Progenitor Commitment andInteraction During Tissue Formation” at the Technical University
of Dresden. The sources of tissue
formation are stem cells, two variations of which are interesting tobiomedical researchers. All-rounders are the “pluripotent” embryonic stem cells that have not yet
decided what they’re going to be.
They develop on approximately
day four after the ovum has been

10

fertilised in the inner cell mass ofthe blastocyst and are then able todifferentiate into any cell type theorganism needs. But the adult bodystill has a reservoir of stem cells,
for example in the skin, the intestines, the bone marrow and thebrain. These adult stem cells are
specific to a certain type of tissue.
However, their ability to develop
into mature cells is more or lesslimited, depending on the organ,
and when they do, the number ofstem cells decreases because theycannot regenerate indefinitely.
“Cultivating limbs or complex
organs is science fiction,” says
Ehninger. But the SFB’s researchers do hope to be able to jumpstart nature’s repair shop in the
future. “How can we train stem
cells in or outside of the body tohelp them correct injuries betteror replace missing tissues?” To
begin answering this question, one
needs to understand what causes astem cell to become a certain bodycell and to behave in a useful andfriendly manner within the target tissue. Because a remarkablegroup of internationally renowned
researchers has taken up residence

in Dresden – not least thanks to thestate of Saxony’s biotechnology initiative – it was an obvious choice to
combine this rich expertise into an
SFB. In 2005, experts in molecularand cellular biology, bioengineering and medicine joined forces
to uncover the mystery of tissue
formation. They focus on the haematopoietic system – stem cells inthe bone marrow and blood – andthe nervous system, down to thepancreatic islet cells that produce
insulin.
While the day care centre at
Dresden’s university clinic looks
after her child, Elly Tanaka candevote her full attention to theaxolotl. The American scientist,
who works for the SFB’s partner
institution, the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology andGenetics, wants to know how thissalamander manages to completely regenerate its spinal cord. Why
can’t mammals do this? After all,they too have neural stem cells. SFB
project leaders Wieland Huttnerfrom Germany und Denis Corbeil
from Canada were able to isolate
neural stem cells in mice after they
had discovered on the cell surface
a marker called prominin. Just likeembryonic stem cells, according to
Huttner’s hypothesis, they seem tobe able to divide asymmetrically:on the one hand they can multiply,
and on the other hand they can specialise into nerve cells – albeit onlyin test tubes. Rather than prompting stem cells to differentiate, thebrain prefers a less effective route:it compensates for an injury bycreating new connections between
undamaged neurons. Examining
the axolotl for clues, Elly Tanaka
has already discovered that neighbouring cells are in part responsible for whether or not a neuralstem cell differentiates. In the spi-

Axolotl as model: this salamander
is the king of regeneration.

Martin Bornhäuser

This electron-microscope image
shows blood stem cells thathave grown for seven days on
mesenchymal stem cells, whichfunction as “developmental aids”.

nal cords of mammals, however,this kind of interaction between
cells appears to be blocked bycertain signal molecules. Now she
wants to implant neural stem cells
from mice in injured axolotl tails
to find out whether it is possible
to “infect” mammalian cells withthe salamander’s self-healing strategies.
The strange thing, according toEhninger, is that while the cell biology of neural stem cells is quite wellknown at this point, these insights
have so far resisted medical utilisation. When it comes to haematopoietic cells, however, the opposite is true: knowledge about theircell biology is quite limited, andyet leukaemia patients, for example, whose own degenerative bonemarrow needs to be destroyed bychemotherapy, have been successfully treated with blood stem celltransplants. Dresden has one ofEurope’s largest centres for theseprocedures. To be able to evendetect the sparse number of stem
cells in the bone marrow or blood,
Ehninger also uses the marker
molecule prominin, which can befound on the membranes of blood
stem cells as well as on those ofneural stem cells. Because they canbe purified much better today thanin the past, the risk of the recipient’s body showing a defensive
reaction is also lower.
Little is known so far about how
implanted blood stem cells settle
into their niche in the bone marrow, or how they multiply, differentiate and survive there. To date,says Ehninger, there has been no
successful attempt to reproduce
blood stem cells outside the body.
More precise knowledge would bea boon to transplantation medicine.
A clue might be held by so-called
mesenchymal stem cells, also located in the bone marrow. They
apparently stimulate the self-re-newal of blood stem cells and support them in making red and whiteblood cells as well as platelets.
These two cell types, according toCorbeil’s theory, are able to communicate thanks to certain surface
proteins, including prominin, andcorresponding receptors. The researchers try to get to the bottomof this collusion between mesenchymal and prominin blood stem
cells by recreating their naturalbone marrow niche. Together withmaterials scientists from the Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research,Martin Bornhäuser cultivates thecells on a plastic matrix whose surface is covered with natural bodyproteins.
Ehninger’s goals for this project
are highly ambitious. After transplantations, it turned out that thedescendants of especially pure
blood stem cell lines showed up
in other tissues as well. The factthat they did not – as was often
feared – simply fuse with bodycells might be a sign that prominin
blood stem cells are able to differentiate into other tissue types as
well, and are thus “multipotent”.
Ehninger wants to cultivate themand implant them into mice to see
whether they actually form not
only blood cells but also muscle,
kidney, or nerve cells.
“To be able to assess the possibilities of adult stem cells you
also have to study embryonic stem
cells,” says Ehninger, “because
they’re the blueprint for the entire
tissue formation.” AustralianFrancis Stewart works with thosein mice. “They have two notable qualities,” he says. “For one
thing, they divide indefinitely andvery quickly. For another, mice are
unique among mammals in that
under stress they can stop embryonic development at the blastocyst
stage.” To be able to study the differentiation of these cells as wellas the function of certain genes,
he develops, on this basis, methods that will help him to cultivatethem and preserve their pluripotency. Undifferentiated stem cells,
unlike more mature ones, have noepigenetic markers yet. The epigenome is a kind of master planoutside of the DNA: “Epigenetic
markers in cell development arekind of like locks, in that they perpetually seal decisions about thedirection in which a cell lineage
specialises,” says Stewart. Investigating them would not just provide
insights into the steps involved instem cell differentiation – picking
these locks would also enable scientists to reprogramme adult cellsand “reboot” their descendants.
Nobody knows yet whether
murine embryonic stem cells
are similar to human ones. For aproject outside of the SFB, Stewart
now has been granted permission
to research human embryonic stem
cells as well. German law currently restricts the use of surplus blastocysts from in vitro fertilisations
to those generated in other countries before 1 January 2002. Stewart thinks that ethical qualms may
eventually be dispelled: “If embryonic stem cells can do everything,
they can also become egg cells.”
No new embryos would be neededat that point. But until then, Ehninger believes, it would be important
for the quality of research to beable to work with younger cells– just old enough to be sure they
were not produced specifically forthis purpose.
“The competition between
adult and embryonic stem cells
is open,” says Ehninger. “But ourultimate goal for the 12-year maximum funding period is to advance,at least in one of our fields, a new
therapy to the point where weactually can heal patients.”

Marion Kälke
11

Autonomous Cooperating Logistic Processes

Learning and ForgettingN

ew communication technologies, aided by the internet, promote a process in which businesses
increasingly become placeless.
While industrial manufacturing
just a few years ago still entailed
many workers concentrated in one
location, the boundaries of production plants are now becoming
blurry. The parts of an automobile,for instance, may now arrive fromall corners of the world and beassembled by an invisible guiding
hand at locations that can change
any day. And thanks to laptop computers and PDAs, today’s information elite can set up office anywhere, anytime.
“This has consequences that go
far beyond what meets the eye,”says Otthein Herzog, coordinatorof SFB 637 “Autonomous Cooperating Logistic Processes: A Para-digm Shift and its Limitations” at
the University of Bremen. “Internaland external logistic processes
across companies are becoming
increasingly complex, and themarkets accelerate this processeven further by changing fromsellers’ markets, which are essen-“Let that containerfrom China decide how
to get to Bremen.”tially maintained by centralised
supply chains, to buyers’ markets,
in which a wide variety of individual demands try to coax evernew streams of products.”
Logistics is therefore due fora paradigm shift, as summarised

SFB637

12

by Herzog’s slogan “From conventional to autonomous control”.
Logistics companies traditionallyuse hierarchically organised information and communication structures. But as markets become evermore dynamic and logistic networks more complex, centralised
planning will no longer be enoughto make sure that the right productgets to the right place at the righttime. Distribution processes willneed to be automatic, with increasingly autonomous and decentralised controls. “That container from
China on the ship to Bremen will
have the intelligence to know what
its cargo is, how perishable thegoods are, what its current locationis, and by way of which transfer
stations it will best reach its destination.”
Since the beginning of 2004,
researchers from disciplines as
different as economics, production engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, andmathematics have been working
hand in hand within SFB 637. They
want to find out to what extent
logistics systems can be left to thedevices of autonomously controlled
processes. As of yet, unansweredquestions abound: It sounds so
simple, but what exactly are autonomous logistic processes, and how
are they different from externallycontrolled processes? How does
autonomous control change orderprocessing? How can these newprocesses be modelled, and which
methods can be used? How canautonomously controlled processes
be measured and evaluated?
“Logistics as a research focus at
the University of Bremen relates
to a traditional core competencyof Bremen-based business,” says

Two demonstrators give lab visitorsa sense of the work SFB 637
does for autonomous processes
in automotive logistics.

Herzog, adding that a research network for logistics had been in placefor quite a while at the university.
The idea to establish an SFB was
the brainchild of engineer Bernd
Scholz-Reiter from Cottbus, who in2000 became professor of production engineering in Bremen. He saw
at this university a wide-ranging
scientific potential to explore issuesof autonomous control in logistics
collaboratively from a variety ofperspectives. “One of our initialtasks was, of course, to clarify theterminology,” he says and introduces the SFB’s working definition: autonomous control describes
processes of decentralised decision
making in heterarchical (horizontal
rather than vertical) structures. It
presumes interacting elements
in non-deterministic systems thatare capable and enabled to makeindependent decisions, and it aims
to achieve “increased robustness
and positive emergence of thetotal system due to distributed andflexible coping with dynamics andcomplexity”. Positive emergence?
“It’s a term from systems theory,”
explains Scholz-Reiter. “Complex,
autonomously controlled systems
may develop properties that can’t
be understood as the sum of theindividual components. Emergenceis a typical feature of biologicalsystems.”
In addition to modern information and communication technologies, new developments in computing were another source ofinspiration for the researchers in
Bremen: Soon it will be possible
to tag all kinds of goods not justwith passive barcodes but withradio frequency identification
chips that communicate actively.
The initials RFID spur the imagination not only of researchers but
also of professionals in the logistics
industry. Together with wirelesscommunication networks, satellitebased positioning systems, modern
sensor technology, and continuously expanding computing powerand data capacity in tiny spaces,
RFIDs make the vision of autonomously deciding intelligent logistic
objects, putting together their own
itineraries almost like travellers,“a distinct possibility”, comments
Michael Freitag.

Freitag, also an engineer, is the
managing director of SFB 637. Heorganises fortnightly talks, which
always include guest speakers
from other universities as well as
businesses. To promote internaland external communication, hepublishes an eight-page newsletter
twice a year that gives interested
readers, especially among the business community and the generalpublic, a chance to learn about the
SFB’s work. At the 2006 Hannover
Fair, the SFB exhibited a “smart”
container, prepared by the scien-“Many technologies forautonomous control
are already, or willsoon be, available.”tists as a demonstration platformto provide, at a reduced scale of
1:16, a glimpse into the future: The
scenario involved shipping fresh
fish from Bremerhaven to Frankfurt, with an electronic waybill that
could be accessed anytime, anywhere by software agents with aknowledge base. “Throughout
this scenario there are all kinds ofinternal and external disruptions
such as congested highways andcommunication breakdowns andcooling outages,” explains Freitag,“all of which our container can recognise and thereby trigger decision
processes in and between software
agents.”From the beginning, the SFB has
been guided by the idea that theresults of basic research should be
implemented in the real businessworld even while the SFB is still inprogress. Right in its first year, itsponsored an industry colloquiumwith about 80 logistics professionals
from businesses small and large.
“These conversations helped us
ask sharper questions,” say Otthein
Herzog und Bernd Scholz-Reiter in
unison. In a total of 13 projects, thescientists in Bremen examine thefoundations of modelling autonomous logistic processes, develop
methods and tools, identify potential areas of application – and even
within this first funding period,

they are preparing to increasingly
focus on developing applications
beginning in 2008.
But they are not quite ready yet.
The first two years have proven theold adage about the devil in thedetails: “Many of the useful technologies we need for autonomous
control have already been developed or will be available in thenear future,” says Scholz-Reiter.
“But the bottleneck we have to getpast with our research is the overall
organisation.” Economists do haveorganisational theory models, but
those need to be adapted to thetask of autonomous control. Different technologies have to be
integrated to cooperate fruitfully,
and “developing the algorithms forall of that is going to be a toughpiece of work for us, because we’relooking at systems that behave in a
non-linear, dynamic way, and there
are no analytic methods to describe
these yet.”“At the level of simulations we
can already show how autonomous control works,” says Herzog.
“But the paradigm shift we mention in the title of our SFB hasn’t
been explored yet by a long shot.”If logistic objects are to makeautonomous decisions, they need,among other things, a knowledge
base – just like humans do. Thesetypes of issues are being investigated by the knowledge management project. And how potentiallyscattered knowledge can be madeavailable to technical objects in a
way that makes sure they use theright information – that is the kindof question asked by researchers in
the risk management project. Twoyears into their endeavour, theyknow about the importance not
only of creating a knowledge basefor interacting software agents, socalled multi-agent systems, but alsoof something human beings know
all too well: forgetting. “Learningand forgetting knowledge – that’s
an unsolved mystery,” says Herzog.
An RFID chip on a logistic object
has to be capable of forgetting,
simply because its storage capacity
is limited – “and even a containerthat had to select a route several
times before, in similar situations,should only be able to remember
the right paths.”
Dieter Beste
13

Control of Tropical Infectious Diseases

Dangerous Shapeshifters
Still, many scientists stopped
short of recommending treatednets. A long-standing hypothesis
had it that children who were
never bitten by mosquitoes will
not be able to develop immunity.
It was feared that they mightend up with even worse cases ofmalaria later in their lives. Many
children, such as in Africa, whose
blood is injected with different
variants of the parasite throughhundreds of mosquito bites,
gradually form a defence which,while not protecting them against
the disease entirely, will at least
prevent the worst.
But this immunity is no reason
to relax. Tropical fever claims one
to two million human lives eachyear. The fact that 20 percent ofchildren in Burkina Faso die before
they reach the age of five, andone-quarter of them from malaria,
SFB 544“Basically,malariacanbecontained using simple tools,”
says Olaf Müller, who heads theworking group for malaria combat
in SFB 544 “Control of Tropical
Infectious Diseases” at the University of Heidelberg. “And thesetools are bed nets that have beentreated with insecticides.” The key
is pyrethroid, an insecticide withno adverse effects on humans.
Mosquitoes of the Anopheles
genus cannot stand its odour andhence buzz off. And if they still
happen to come into contact withthe chemical, they die. “When all
households put up these nets, itdrastically reduces the numberof mosquitoes,” explains Müller.
Field studies in the 1990s, in which
Müller participated, proved how
effective bed nets are in protecting
small children and pregnant
women.

prompted Olaf Müller to conduct
a study in that country’s Nounaregion. It proved that mosquito
nets do not simply postpone childmortality and that children who
sleep under nets actually enjoy
more robust health than those who
do not. The World Health Organization (WHO) includes malaria
prevention in its programme as oneof the most important strategies.
Now Müller wants to make surethat enough nets are hung in eachvillage. “That exactly is the weak
spot.” In a new study he wants tofind out which measure works best
to increase acceptance of thesenets among the population.
For many years, the Nouna
Health Research Centre, which
belongs to the Burkina Faso
Ministry of Health, has been apartner of SFB 544, whose work
clearly does not stop at the labdoor. Scientists from Heidelberg
and Nouna conduct epidemiological and demographic studies,
perform drug and vaccine trials,
and do research on healthcare
system development, including
efforts to provide people withhealth insurance. The University
of Heidelberg is the only German
institution that cooperates thisclosely and across disciplines withan African research station. “It’simportant that our work helps those
who need it most,” says SFB coordinator Hans-Georg Kräusslich.
One-third of all deaths worldwide
are due to infectious diseases, andsub-Saharan Africa holds the sadrecord in this category.
While most of the SFB’s projects
focus on malaria, some others
look at the AIDS virus HIV andat trypanosomatids, which cause
conditions such as sleeping sickness. The biggest and mostFighting malaria: In a patient study
in Burkina Faso, physicians test
the combination drug BlueCQ.
14

Outguessing the AIDS virus requires
understanding the interaction between
the pathogen and the infected cell:
HIV particles that attach to the cells
are marked with a fluorescent protein.
Marko Lampe, Department of Virology, University of Heidelberg

crucial part of the SFB’s work isdone by scientists in Heidelberg:
biomedical research, therapy anddrug development, clinical trials.
“The fact that we have to bridge
all these areas means that people
talk more,” says Kräusslich. The
SFB employs an unusually highpercentage of young researchers;
six of them are already project
leaders. An independent juniorresearch group, with dedicated
DFG funding to promote the integration of young scientists, isalso part of the network. Juniorresearch groups in SFBs, similar
to those under the DFG’s Emmy
Noether Programme, receive especially generous financial support.
As different as the parasite
Plasmodium falciparum, whichcauses lethal malaria tropica, and
the AIDS virus may be, they sharea frightening ability to constantly
change and thus become resistantto drugs. This is the reason why the
researchers can never rest on theirlaurels. Kräusslich has been studying HIV for 18 years now. Amongthe topics he studied during thistime are the virus’s sophisticatedresistance mechanisms. All the
drugs that are currently available
inhibit or block the virus’s ability toreplicate in the infected patient’s
body. But again and again, andwith breathtaking speed, it keeps
altering its structure in mutations
and thus eludes its attackers.
This is why HIV patients today
are treated with a combination ofdrugs – if one doesn’t work, others
may still have a chance to keep
the pathogen from reproducing.
However, if the point of attack
remains the same, there is a riskof cross resistance: if the virus isalready resistant to five different
inhibitors, a sixth one may not beable to get to it either. “For thisreason, and also because of theside effects, there’s a need not justfor new agents but for new classesof agents,” says Kräusslich. New
mechanisms must continually be
identified to allow intervention at
various stages of viral development.
Kräusslich’s own project looks
at the viral particles that are
released during the last stage
as the virus leaves the infected
cell. A possible target for antiviral drugs could be the assembly
process. “You can think of it likea Lego structure,” explains thevirologist. “If we can manage toinsert a piece somewhere that
doesn’t fit, there won’t be a house– or, in our case, a virus.” Such apiece – a short protein fragment– has already been generated by
the researchers. “We’ve been able
to do it in vitro but not yet in thecomplete virus,” says Kräusslich.
“Pharmacological development isstill a ways off. For now we wantto prove that assembly inhibition
is feasible to begin with.”
Sometimes it helps to take anunusual path. Biochemist Heiner
Schirmer, who researches malaria
medicines at the SFB, had the ideaof bringing back an ancient, longforgotten substance to outsmart
the Plasmodium parasite’s resistance – methylene blue. It was firstused in the late 19th century byPaul Ehrlich to successfully treat
malaria patients. Schirmer wanted
to combine it with the staple
drug chloroquine, whose efficacy
against Plasmodia is waning.
Methylene blue is doubly effective because it inhibits glutathione reductase, an enzyme that
protects the parasite both against
being attacked by our immune
system and against chloroquine.
For a patient study on the combi-

nation drug BlueCQ, Schirmer
received the Dream Action Award
from the Dutch chemicals group
DSM in 2002.
“Schirmer had no experience
with clinical trials,” remembers
Olaf Müller, “so he approached
me within the SFB.” They put
together a multidisciplinary teamthat began testing BlueCQ on
patients in Burkina Faso. Ultimately the scientists had to facea setback – the synergy between
the two substances was not sufficient. Today, however, they haveonce again cause to be hopeful:laboratory tests have shown thatmethylene blue harmonises wellwith artemisinins, a new group of
drugs extracted from a Chinese
wormwood plant. A total of 180
patients, who currently participate in a pilot study, hope that
this cocktail can cure them.
“The best weapon, of course,
would be a vaccine,” says Müller.
Taking the first step, SFB project
leader Hermann Bujard has
been able to identify a protein in
the Plasmodium parasite that is
considered a vaccine candidate
and, according to Müller, “reason
to be cautiously optimistic”.
HIV vaccinations, however, arecurrently not on the horizon. The
sad part, says Kräusslich, is that
there is actually an easy way
for people to protect themselves– “avoid getting infected”. That
is why education remains themost important task. But the fightmust continue on all fronts. Oneof them brings basic researcher
Kräusslich closer to the daily livesof the people who are affected in
Burkina Faso. This project aims tokeep HIV-positive mothers fromtransmitting the virus to their children, at birth and then throughbreast milk. To be able to effectively treat mother and child,
he checks the patient’s immune
response and the resistance of hervirus. “This project in particular
was initiated at the request of ourcolleagues in Nouna, because up
to that point there were no counselling or treatment programmesfor HIV in the entire region,” says
Kräusslich. “It never would’ve
happened without the SFB.”Marion Kälke
15

Exploring Limbo

Control of Quantum
Correlations in Tailored MatterW

hen experimental physicists researcher Wolfgang Ketterle themeet theoretical physicists, 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics.
when nanophysicists want to talk“In 1997 we were first in Europe
to quantum opticians, or solid state to produce Bose-Einstein condenphysicists to quantum information sates,” says Wolfgang Peter
scientists, a blackboard and chalk Schleich, quantum physicist at
may be needed to cope with a the University of Ulm. By “we” heBabylonian jumble of terms – only means the DFG-funded research
the formula written on the wall group that was formed in the midwill bring clarity. “For example, in 1990s and ultimately led to thesemiconductor physics we refer to proposal of SFB/TRR 21.
the quality of a resonator as quality
The transregional variation offactor,” says Reinhold Kleiner, an SFB is often favoured by appli“but opticians call it finesse.” This cants when the expertise needed
Friday, the colloquium of SFB/TRR for the chosen research area is not
21 (TRR stands for Transregional) available at one single university
was held inand therefore
Tübingen,requires coopand Reinhold“We’re building a bridge between eration
with
Kleiner, one
others. At theatomic and solid state physics.”of the project
same
time,
leaders andthe standard
a solid stateagainst which
physicist at the University of potential Transregionals are measTübingen, once again hosted a ured in terms of partner choicepanel of about two dozen scien- and scientific quality is especiallytists.
high. Reviewers apply stringent
They meet every other week criteria: the work packages thatat rotating locations because the the various universities contributeTransregional SFB also includes need to complement each otherphysicists from the universities perfectly, and only the best of theof Ulm and Stuttgart, as well as best in science may be included
from the Max Planck Institute for in the network. In addition, each
Solid State Research in Stuttgart. university has to make the topic
In mid-2005 these researchers of the SFB/TRR a core researchteamed up and set out to control area.
quantum matter. They also hoped
From the very beginning, athey could discover new states driving force behind the inceptionof matter, which they suspected of SFB/TRR 21 was Tilman Pfau,
to exist somewhere in the limbo who in 2000 left the University of
between mesoscopic systems – the Constance to head the 5th Instidomain of solid state physics – and tute of Physics at the University ofquantum gases – the research Stuttgart. Pfau is the coordinatorfield of quantum physicists. The of SFB/TRR 21. “In our former
latter topic received a major boost quantum gas research group wein 1995, when the so-called Bose- were only focusing on one aspect ofEinstein condensation of ultracold the current Collaborative Researchatomic gases near absolute zero Centre though,” he says, “and thatwas realised for the first time. This was the physics of cold atoms.”
achievement earned American
Tilman Pfau’s research in SFB/
scientists Eric Cornell and Carl TRR 21 is still centred on BoseWieman and US-based German Einstein condensates. In a world16

wide first, his working groupat the University of Stuttgart
succeeded last year in condensing
chromium gas at a temperatureof 700 nanokelvins from morethan 50,000 chromium atoms, andsubsequently even from twice that
number. Although Albert Einstein
had predicted the phase transition
from “regular” matter to a BoseEinstein condensate as early as
1925, the experimental confirmation was not to happen until many
decades later. Only laser cooling– recognised with the 1997 Nobel
Prize – made it possible to cool
atoms in the gas phase down toabout 10 to 100 microkelvins. Since
they are already quite motionless at this level, moving only a
few centimetres per second in thegas cloud, atoms can be collectedindividually by physicists using
magnetic or optical traps, andchilled even further to just a few
100 nanokelvins with a techniquecalled evaporative cooling.
And then, close to absolutezero, it happens: atoms lose their
independence and behave as one
single quantum-mechanical object.
Their classic manifestation as individual, distinguishable particles
suddenly flips into a new state ofmatter with collective, quantummechanical wave behaviour – ina Bose-Einstein condensate, atoms
become indistinguishable. Characteristic is the coherence of the
wave behaviour, meaning theuniform wavelength throughout
the entire extension of the condensate, along with the formation ofentirely new properties of matter.
Physicists have suspected for awhile that this fundamental difference to “regular” matter might be
the basis for macroscopic quantum
phenomena such as superconductivity or superfluidity. “Our BoseEinstein condensates of chromium
atoms, for example, showed ferro-Tilman Pfau

Experimental setup at the 5th Instituteof Physics, University of Stuttgart: It
allows Tilman Pfau and his team totransform 100,000 chromium atoms
into a Bose-Einstein condensate. The
top right part of the picture shows
the laser beam being reflected into
the vacuum chamber for cooling.

magnetic properties,” reports
Pfau. He suspects that chromium
condensates may at some point
be used in nanotechnology as asource of atom lasers to deposit
individual atoms on surfaces, withhigh resolution.
Ultracold
atoms,
quantumgases, Bose-Einstein condensates– this is just one of 14 projects
in SFB/TRR 21. “In a sense we’re
approaching from two sides the
middle of a bridge that we’rebuilding between atomic physicists and solid state physicists,”
says Tilman Pfau. Because oncethe conversation got underway,
it quickly became clear that “thephysics of atoms and of mesoscopic
systems with object dimensions of
10 to 100 nanometres, which arealso ruled by quantum effects, areactually quite similar.”
The common goal of the various
physics disciplines in SFB/TRR 21
is to utilise the partially complementary control options in order
to direct multi-particle quantum
correlations and use the commonalities of mesoscopic systems andquantum gases to find new statesof matter, generate new dynamic
quantum
states,understandscaling behaviour from few-body
to many-body systems, manipulate and investigate the effects ofdecoherence, and control lightmatter states.
In fact, several successfulattempts have been made in recent

years to control quantum gases asinteractive quantum matter in very
well-defined geometries and at
ultracold temperatures. “With our
supercomputer at the Universityof Stuttgart, we can also simulate
the interaction between particles,”says Alejandro Muramatsu fromthe University of Stuttgart, another
SFB/TRR 21 project leader. But healso points to the limits of theoretical virtual analysis of quantum
matter: “When it was installed ayear ago, our computer was thefastest one in Germany and, in its
capacity as a vector computer, thefastest supercomputer in Europe– and still it only manages to show
the behaviour of 36 particles.”The SFB/TRR researchers are
confident that the techniques andmethods from solid state physics
will enable them to assemble
quantum matter like in a Legosystem. “I can’t wait to see how theexperimental findings are going tocompare to our calculations,” says
Wolfgang Peter Schleich. “Whatis it going to look like for 30 particles? Will the experiment and thecalculation arrive at the same
result for 35 particles? And then, ofcourse, I dream about new experimental territory – 40 particles, 50
particles, 100 even.”
The optimistic faith in being
able to strike lucky and make new
discoveries in the no man’s land
between micro- and mesocosm
is due to the fact “that after our

initial talks across the intra-scientific cultural boundary we quickly
realised we were already holding
the necessary tools in our hands,”
says Reinhold Kleiner. “It took us
a bit of time to see that, but once
we did, it certainly electrified us.”“Each community really has its
own history and developed overtime a shared understanding of
the underlying physics,” explains
Pfau. “So if together now we learn
how the other side looks at thesethings, we all benefit – and that’s
an added value this Transregional
Collaborative Research Centre isgoing to generate.” “And it’s notjust about mutual understanding– our techniques are different
too, each community has its own
methods,” adds Kleiner.
Tilman Pfau and his colleagues
therefore concluded that theyneeded to go out of their way in
SFB/TRR 21 to establish a newbasis of understanding among
physicists. This entails, forinstance, that doctoral researchers
are required to spend at least one
week on one of the other community’s projects – collaborating,learning about other mindsets andmethods, and finally giving a talkabout their experience. “We’rehoping that the euphoric enthusiasm that has gripped the project
leaders will also catch on at thelevel of our doctoral researchers,”
says Pfau.
.
Dieter Beste17

Memory Cultures

Archaeology of
Remembrance
ne of the most intriguing triggers of memory in literature
is a piece of cake dunked in tea,a madeleine. An aunt used to giveit to the narrator when he was achild. In Marcel Proust’s novel In
Search of Lost Time (1913), thisexperience is repeated many years
later, and suddenly “all the flowers
in our garden and […] the goodfolk of the village and their little
dwellings and the parish church[…] sprang into being […] from mycup of tea.”
People prefer not to rely on theirmental memory alone, or on coincidences of the sort encounteredby this novel’s protagonist. Rather,
they use mnemonics such as photo
albums, travel souvenirs – whichhave become commercial mass
products – or an heirloom pocket
watch. This topic was exploredin an exhibition about “TheSouvenir”, in the broadest sense of
the word, which was put together
by the SFB 434 “Memory Cultures”
at the University of Gießen andpresented in 2006 at the Museumof Applied Arts in Frankfurt. It
documented individual and collective efforts to outwit forgetfulness,be they serious, trivial, tacky,
nostalgic or bizarre. In the Middle
Ages, pilgrims brought relics homeas keepsakes. In the 18th and 19th
centuries, hair locks were artfully
woven, braided and framed tocommemorate a deceased lover.
Other mementos symbolise political upheaval: models, made circa
1880, of the Bastille, the stormingof which had unleashed theFrench Revolution; or chunks of
the Berlin Wall, which were sold inthe streets after the reunificationof Germany.
Historians, by definition, areprofessional rememberers, chroniclers of previous events. Art andliterary history also look backto the past. “In the nineties we18

saw a shift in the humanities,”
reports historian Jürgen Reulecke,
who heads the SFB. “On the one
hand there was textbook history.
But now there was suddenly aninterest in people’s experiences
within their particular Zeitheimat[home in time].” After the SFB was
founded in 1997, it developed into
something like an engine of thistrend.
The researchers investigate thequestion: “Who remembers what,
and how?” – and their scope spans
all the way from antiquity to thepresent. To be sure, memory is
first of all something subjective
and intimate that happens inside a
person’s head. But “it never occurs
in a vacuum,” says English literature scholar Birgit Neumann, whocoordinates the SFB together withReulecke. Memories are tied intosocial, religious, cultural, ethnic,
generational and gender-specificcontexts. “And transporting themeffectively across generations
requires the use of media.” These
include not only “things”, as theexhibition in Frankfurt called
them, but also spoken and written
language, images and sounds,
rituals, ceremonies, and performances. Over time, technologicalrevolutions changed the media
and, by extension, the characterof the memories. This is the topic
of the work groups, where young
researchers feature prominently
and which serve as a collaborative forum for the representativesof the 20 projects.
Memories are even a factor
where one would not expect them
to be. Sociologist Andreas Langenohl focuses on an industry thatStaged tradition:
former Kenyan president
Kenyatta in Kikuyu garb.

actually specialises in anticipating
the future – financial trading. He
asked analysts and fund managers
about the significance of the pastand of memory in their day-today work. Of course they use
chart techniques, which serve toforecast price development on amathematical basis, to forge theirstrategies. They also consider
the history of individual companies and their stock performance,
because they have to justify any
recommendations and decisions totheir investors. “But every traderis also aware of the earliest incidences of speculative bubble
bursts – the Dutch Tulip Mania of
1636 and the South Sea crash of1720 in London.” Not to mention
more recent events that impacted
the stock markets: the first Iraq
War, the boom of the 1990s, thecollapse of the New Economy
hype in 2000. Langenohl thinks it
peculiar that professional inves-

Winfried Speitkamp

OAxel Schneider / Museum of Applied Arts, Frankfurt

In friendship albums, similar to today’s autograph books, good friends immortalised themselves withdedications. The one in the picture, from 1792, belonged to one Johann Gottlieb Krantz.

tors, in keeping with the principles of stock market guru André
Kostolany, expect prices to rise in
the long term based on the real
economy – while on the trading
floor, they’re all about quick reactions, buying and selling rapidly.
Their decisions follow the assumption that the other investors arealso guided by previous crises,
rumours, or success stories.
“We purposely chose the pluralof the word ‘culture’ for the nameof our SFB,” explains Reulecke,“because it implies the changeability, diversity, and conflictsof memory.” Financial experts
remember the Iraq War differently from the Iraqis, who in turnremember it differently from US
soldiers. And population groups
everywhere are at odds about
what is worth remembering in thefirst place. Taboos are common,and so is repression. The crimesof the Nazi regime, for instance,
did not fully enter public awareness until the youth rebellion of the
1960s, after Germany was rebuilt– this too is the topic of an SFB
project. A case in point of how
difficult this remains for Germans
is the construction of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, which,among other controversies, raised
the question of whether there is a“hierarchy of Nazi victims”, as themagazine Der Spiegel put it. “At
first, of course, the victims were
the Jews, the Sinti and Roma, thepopulation of the occupied territories, and the persecuted,” says
Reulecke. Forgotten to this day,however, are those who experienced World War II as children and
who – unlike expellees, for example– have no lobby. In 2005 the SFB
cosponsored a conference about“The Generation of War Children”,
and one SFB project examines thetraumatic experiences of these“children without fathers”.
Especially the radical upheavalsof the last hundred years havegiven rise to conflicted memories.
In cooperation with the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem, Reulecke
investigates, in another project, thecultural shock that young German
Jews underwent when theyemigrated to Palestine. Back when
they were involved in the Weimar
Republic’s youth movement, theywould “naturally hike through theGerman forests in Wandervogelgroups”. The scholars try to findout which notions they took withthem to the foreign world.
A different confrontation of
two cultures occupies historianWinfried Speitkamp. He examines
how people in colonial and postcolonial East Africa reflected on
their life histories and how in theirmemories the values, norms andattitudes of their colonial masters
merged with their own. The
encounter also shaped their notionof tradition, because between theexperience of childhood and its
remembrance lies a long period
filled with new impressions.
Among them, says Speitkamp, isinterestingly also the influence thatthe critique of Western civilisation
had on Africans in the early 20th
century – it led them to construct
a mythicised image of their own
roots. In the colonial era, tradition
furthermore became an instrument for politicians in their fightfor national independence. Former

Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta(circa 1892 to 1978), for example,
wrote his master’s thesis in London
about the Kikuyu people. When it
was published in 1938 as the bookFacing Mount Kenya, the coverphoto showed him sporting traditional dress. “In real life, of course,
he wore a suit.”
Speitkamp’s sources are mostly
autobiographies. Obadiah Kariuki,
bishop of the Anglican Church in
Kenya, recounts in his memoir(1985) how he rose from a goatherder to a respected church
elder. He explores the values ofWestern and traditional religion
and culture, ultimately defining
his own position in today’s Africa
as a synthesis of both. “Manyothers like him have constructednarratives of their lives that gavethem meaning and identity,” says
Speitkamp.
Before long, the SFB will beable to remember its own history.
When the 12-year funding period
ends in 2008, the scholars will
have a cornucopia of results toshow for it: a wide range of books,
including a special series with 27
volumes to date; an interdisciplinary series of countless lecturesby guest presenters for Gießen
audiences with intellectual interests; as well as intense collaborations with Jerusalem, with Cornell
University in Ithaca, New York,and with European institutions.
“What’s exciting,” says Reulecke,“is that the topic still won’t be
exhausted when the SFB is over.”He is convinced that the younger
generation of researchers willcontinue to follow the traces ofremembrance.
Marion Kälke
19Industrially Relevant Modelling Tools

The Mystery of Properties
T

heir number is legion: 2,288
steel grades are currently listedby the European Steel Registryalone, and that does not even
include proprietary grades andsteels according to non-European
regulations. The number of grades
reflects the spectrum of properties that this material may exhibit– differences in hardness, toughness, or malleability, to name afew. “Isn’t it strange that all thesedifferent properties emerge fromalmost the same chemical composition?” asks Günter Gottstein,head of the Department of Physical Metallurgy and Metal Physics
at RWTH Aachen University, andgoes on to answer his own question: “It’s not chemistry but physics
that determines the propertiesof steel – the microstructure, thespatial distribution of elements, thecrystal structure, but also defects
in the crystal lattice.”
Günter Gottstein is the coordinator of Transfer Project 63“Industrially Relevant Modelling
Tools”, a 3-year undertaking at
RWTH Aachen that began earlyin 2006, following the conclusion of SFB 370 “Integral Materials Modelling”. It pursues joint
projects with manufacturing businesses to exploit basic researchfindings for industrial applications
and test their essential feasibility,
but also to feed new or fartherreaching research issues back to
the university. For 12 years, theSFB had focused on developinga “through-process simulation ofmaterials”.
Steel, for instance, is an alloyof iron and carbon, to which otherelements such as nickel, chromium, manganese or titanium may
be added in varying percentages.
The tricky part: “Composition
allows us only vaguely to predictthe properties of a material,” says
Gottstein. “To do so with any precision we need to know its particular microstructure, which unfortunately comes in a wide variety
20

at the atomic level. Not only that,it also continually changes along
the process chain during material
production.” On the one hand, thismultitude of microstructure states
enables engineers to achieve awide range of properties with one
and the same material by setting
process parameters accordingly.
But on the other hand, this delicate
dependence of microstructure on
the material’s individual production
history is a veritable nightmare fordevelopers who want, as Gottstein
puts it, “to tailor materials”.
“The idea for our Collaborative
Research Centre was born when it
became clear that the performanceof computers could be expected
to continue its dynamic development going forward,” remembers
Gottstein. In the 1980s and 1990s,
when the opportunity emerged touse numerical methods to perform
complete calculations of scientificmodels and to create simulations
at affordable costs, it was eagerly
seized, not least by materials scientists. “Before that,” says Gottstein,“we had to keep our models simple
to capture them, say, in a differential equation.” But unfortunately,
in a complicated environment like

“We were able to calculatechanges in the microstructure ofmaterials along process chains.”
materials science, these equations
usually did not have a closed form
solution; therefore “we often had
to make do with upper and lower
limits,” he adds.
When SFB 370 began its workon 1 January 1994, the researchersin Aachen, who had alreadycollaborated on various projects
within the RWTH Materials
Science Forum, were optimisticthat computers were going to help
them arrive at results that to date
had been considered impossible.

The challenge was to shorten thecustomarily long development
times in materials science – it caneasily take 10 or even 15 years
for a product to make it from thelab to the market. Because of thecomplicated, nonlinear dependencies, scientists have to formulate
empirical relationships between
process conditions and material
properties – “and this requires anendless number of test series,”
adds Gottstein, “many attempts
that may well fail, the development of pilot production facilities
to evaluate process feasibility,and finally the effort to optimise amaterial’s qualities for its specificapplication.”
The industry’s increasingly
shorter product cycles and risingcosts provided additional motivation for basic research scientists
to look for remedies. The SFB had
a clear strategy for tackling theissue of long development times:
theoretically describe the physicallaws underlying microstructuredevelopment along the process
chain, and pass on critical microstructural state variables fromprocess stage to process stage,
until finally arriving at the end
product’s microstructure, which
determines its properties.
During the SFB’s initial three
years, the focus was therefore
on formulating physical models
and choosing suitable simulation
methods. “In the second phase, wethen developed simulation codesand customised them for specificmaterials and product lines,”
reports Gottstein. The third SFB
stage was dedicated to linking the
microstructure models with eachother and combining them withthe process models. For example,
in a certain time interval during
the hot rolling of an aluminium
sheet, the simulation modules
for phase transformation, recrystallisation, crystal plasticity, andtexture had to be interfaced interactively and integrated into finite

Screenshots: Mediakonzept

Image sequence of a recrystallisation process simulation. Online demonstration at:
www.imm.rwth-aachen.de/hp/institut/fg/sim/welcome.htm

element programmes. In the last
SFB period “we then defined
specific materials and components
whose properties we wanted to
predict” reports Gottstein. A steel
component was selected, namelya bracket made from carbon steel;in addition, an aluminium sheet,
which was to be moulded with adeep drawing technique; a turbine
blade made from a nickel-basesuperalloy, with a surface that had
to be coated; and a pipe fitting
made from the plastic polypropylene.
“We were able to describe
property relations along process
chains on the basis of microstructure and calculate, in models,changes in the microstructure,”says Gottstein, summarising the
SFB’s accomplishments. What thismeans for the practice of material
development is clarified with an
example by engineer Sonja Stratemeier from the RWTH Department of Ferrous Metallurgy. She
recounts her attempts to apply an
SFB-developed programme forsimulating the solidification ofmelt to the solidification processes
in continuous casting. To predictthe grain growth of solidifying
steel crystals – primary austenite
in this case – she uses a semiempirical model: with a laboratory
mould, she adjusts various coolingconditions as she calculates theparameters of solidification andmicrostructure. Her conclusion:“Through further developmentof the simulation programme andthe grain growth model, it will
be possible to adjust the microstructure in the continuous castingprocess directly.”
Dieter G. Senk, chair of iron andsteel metallurgy at the Department of Ferrous Metallurgy andchairman of the RWTH Materials
Science Forum, in which 56 professors work together, helps to practically implement SFB researchfindings in Transfer Project 63:“We collaborate with a totalof 16 companies, most of whichwere already involved in joint
projects during the SFB period,”
says Senk. “Long development
times are a big issue with material producers.” It is usually large
industrial companies that haverecognised the economic potential of the Aachen-made modelling tools and therefore contribute
their own personnel and laboratory resources to transfer projects,
along with the financial investments this entails.
“The transfer of our SFB
research on the coated turbine
blade also involves smaller
companies, but we’ve noticed thatit’s really not that easy for small
businesses to free up personnel forthis task,” reports Senk. “On topof that, the modelling tools that
we make available to our partners
via the internet are not that easy
to operate. At the moment, a lot oftime still goes into the employees
at our partner firms learning theropes.” “You also have to understand, first of all, what it is thatthese tools do,” adds Gottstein.
“And that’s why we meet veryfrequently right now,” says Senk.
“Also, we want to get to know ourindustry partners better, because
after all, we have to do the experimental work together, which ofcourse means there can’t be any
miscommunication between us
scientists and the developers in
the industry.”“When we started working on
the transfer project, we considered very carefully which practicalindustry issues we should tackle,”
says Günter Gottstein. Together
with seven industrial businesses,
the Aachen-based researchers
worked on challenges such aspredicting local mechanical properties in welds; and together witha major aluminium manufacturer,
they set out to simulate the properties of certain alloys through anumber of steps – hot rolling, coldrolling, and multi-stage annealing.
“We want to test the capabilitiesof our modelling tools, and fromthat angle, of course, it’s a lot moreinteresting not to predict properties you already know from experience, but to focus on critical points
that can abruptly change a material’s properties. That our tools arecapable of doing this is what we’retrying to show.”
Dieter Beste
21

Interview

A Collaborative Research Centre
Pulls People Together
projects came together in part also
because there were excellent researchers available for these areasin the Dortmund region. We started
out as a small core group alreadywith experience cooperating with
one another and then gradually expanded from there.

? Was it challenging to get theUrsula Gather is the coordinatorof SFB 475 “Reduction of Complexity for Multivariate Data Structures” at the University of Dortmund. For nine years, statisticians
have been collaborating here withcomputer scientists, mathematicians, medical scientists, economists and engineering scientists,
mostly from the University of Dortmund, the Institute of Occupational
Physiology and the Surgical Clinic,
both in Dortmund, and the Institutefor Economic Research in Essen.
The SFB aims to develop and implement new statistical methods toanalyse complex data and modeldifficult cause-and-effect relationships. For example: How can vital information be extracted fromthe numerous data streams that an
intensive care bed’s alarm systemdelivers online?

? How did the various projectgroups end up together nine
years ago?
! The motivation was, of course,a scientific one. In the beginning,
there was the realisation that theclassical methods of data analysis
and statistical modelling were nolonger adequate for the complex
issues we encounter in the appliedsciences. But because many data
analysis problems in the life, economic and engineering sciences
are structurally similar, we wanted
to bring them together under theumbrella of statistics and thus create a new type of statistic methodology and procedures. The specific22

communication going between
all the participants from different subject cultures?
! The SFB as a funding instrument requires evidence of interdisciplinary collaboration. A groupof researchers sets out to pioneer
breakthroughs, both in theirown field and across disciplines,that would otherwise be virtually
impossible. When everybody getsready for a review, it pulls people
together. You’re only going to
make it as a team.
But we’ve also created structures that force collaboration andcommunication. Each project has
two leaders from different disciplines, and each methodologist
also heads an application project.
This way, nobody stands alone,and each area has several caretakers. In the beginning, we also
promoted continuous exchange.
For example, we held periodic
retreats, and quite a few good ideas
were born there at the dinner table.
Our young researchers organised
topical discussion circles. In addition, we have exciting related
events going on in Dortmund,such as workshops, guest lectures,or colloquiums. This makes it fun
for everybody to think outside theborders of their subject. It’s how weavoid creating islands.
Our policies regarding resource
allocation, scheduling, responsibilities and documentation were
all openly and jointly agreed onso that we don’t get much friction in our day-to-day work. The
researchers understand that theystrengthen both their own position

and the project when they work
hand in hand.

? What was the effect of person-nel changes, which are bound tohappen when a project extends
over many years?
! Well, you have to change tosurvive. In each funding phase
we adapted to new challenges by
including new projects, for example on gene expression data, orby adjusting to the fact that thelines between certain areas werebeginning to blur, by appointing
young researchers as project leaders, integrating new colleagues
with interesting specialities and by
anticipating upcoming retirements.
Whenever a colleague receives anoffer from another institution, it’sboth regrettable and an honour, although our retention negotiations
have usually been successful. And
for young researchers, it means that
the SFB is seen as a springboard tosuccess, even internationally.

? And what will happen after the
SFB concludes in 2009?

! Of course we’d like to build on

our findings. There are already twotransfer projects associated with
our SFB, where we work with industry partners to create practicalimplementations of our results. We
plan to continue along these lines.
In addition, there are a numberof basic statistical problems thatpersist. An ongoing challenge, forexample, is the “curse of dimensionality”, meaning that none of
our traditional methods work forhigh-dimensional data structures.
There’s no one way to overcome
this challenge; rather, we haveto tackle it with specific new approaches depending on the given
data structure. There’s plenty ofmaterial here for exciting future
projects.
Interviewers: Dieter Beste andMarion Kälke

Round Table

Collaborative Research Centres:
Essential for Basic Research and Transfer

B

ernd Huber, rector of LudwigMaximilians University in
Munich (photo left), and Burkhard
Rauhut, rector of RWTH University in Aachen, discuss the timeliness of Collaborative ResearchCentres and talk about current
challenges.
Huber: Collaborative ResearchCentres are the most important
instrument for implementing andconsolidating basic research atuniversities, thus being able tocontinually focus on new topics.
In addition, SFBs are critical forstrengthening
excellenceinacademia. Given tight publicfinances, SFB funding is also
ultimately the only way for a
German university to successfullycompete in international research.
Furthermore, SFBs help promote
young researchers and encourage
networking across disciplines,
which is important to tap any
potentials that may be foundwhere disciplines intersect.
Rauhut: I can only agree here.
When it comes to basic research,
SFBs are an indispensable instrument. This is particularly true
for the technological disciplines,
as we hardly obtain any support
from industry for basic research.
However, we do need basic
research in order to feed into theproverbial pipeline something that
may become a relevant innovation
for industry 15 or 20 years down
the road.
Huber: I think there is no argument, and it has been known fora while, that our shortcomingin Germany, and probably all ofEurope, is that the conversion ofresearch findings into economic
activity and products takes toolong. Then again, I believe we also
have to be careful not to adopt
a simplistic view – put money inthe slot of the vending machine,
meaning the SFB, and expect amarket-ready commercial productto pop out at the bottom.

Rauhut: Naturally these chainsare far more complicated than that.
But then an SFB may run as longas twelve years. The way I see itsociety is entitled to expect a returnon its investment in research,even though the focus may be on
basic research. In my opinion, it
was a logical step for the DFG to
not only fund the basic researchof SFBs, but also the real-world
application of results in Transfer
Units – working with business,for example, to implement newly
developed technologies. Society’s
demand for a transfer of researchfindings is something that SFBs
that deal with the humanities
should consider as well.
Huber: But I do think we haveto understand that researchers,
first and foremost, want to doresearch and are not necessarily
interested in thinking about thepractical uses of what they do. I do
agree that the transfer concept isimportant and correct. However,it should not cloud our view. At
their core, SFBs should be aboutstrengthening scientific excellence and working toward newscientific insights, initially without
any specific purpose.
Rauhut: I think it is greatthat the promotion of collaborative research in SFBs continues
to spur scientists’ curiosity again
and again. In that sense it’s actually quite smart that an SFB ends
after a maximum of twelve years.
As researchers we do not only
wish but also ought to continually
tackle new topics all the time. So
far, so good – the current government-sponsored Excellence Initiative does show how copiously thefountain of ideas flows. But for ouruniversities this also means that
DFG-funded SFBs tie up university resources to boot. And themore successful a university’s
researchers are in attracting SFB
funds, the more of the university’s
own money has to be earmarked.

Huber: More SFBs are desirable. But to better empower
universities, the DFG will have toincrease SFB funding.
Rauhut: For this reason, we
intend to ask the federal and state
governments to make more money
available for SFB funding, and thisin the short term, not only four orfive years from now. There is anagreement on this issue among themembers of the German Rectors’
Conference.
Huber: Many high-quality
funding proposals for clusters of
excellence and graduate schools,
which were submitted within the
Excellence Initiative of the Federal
and State Governments and might
have to be turned down, would
actually make great starting points
for SFBs.
Rauhut: To make a long story
short: We need more money
for good university research inGermany – not least to salvage
all those great ideas that havebeen and are still being generated
under the Excellence Initiative.
Moderator: Dieter Beste23

Collaborative Research Centres

Facts and Figures
Collaborative Research Centres (Sonderforschungsbereiche,
SFBs) are long-term university
research centres in which scientists and academics work together
within a cross-disciplinary research programme. In addition topromoting excellent research innetworks, the development of coreresearch areas in universities is an
important structural objective of
the programme.
Under the SFB programme,
funding is also provided for variations of traditional SFBs: Cultural
Studies Research Centres (SFB/
FKO) and Transregional Collaborative Research Centres (SFB/
TRR); and for supplementary
programmes: Transfer Projects(TFP) and Independent JuniorResearch Groups (SFB-NWG).
All programmes support andencourage international cooperation.
SFBs total

270

Thereof variations:
SFB/FKO4

SFB/TRR

36

Number % of allof SFBs
SFBs

State

Number ofuniversities
with SFBs

Baden Württemberg

44

16.3

9

Bavaria

41

15.2

7

Berlin

27

10.0

3

Brandenburg

2

0.7

2

Bremen6

2.2

1

Hamburg

6

2.2

1

Hesse

20

7.4

5

Lower Saxony

21

7.8

7

Mecklenburg-Western
Pomerania

3

1.1

2

North Rhine-Westphalia

66

24.5

11

Rhineland-Palatinate

9

3.3

2

Saarland

2

0.7

1

Saxony10

3.7

3Saxony-Anhalt

3

1.1

1

Schleswig-Holstein

5

1.9

2

Thuringia

5

1.9

2

Since the inception of the programme in October 1968, a total of 728
SFBs have been funded. Currently, 270 SFBs receive a total of € 419.5
million in funding for personnel, consumables and equipment.
Engineering Sciences
53 (19.6%)

Humanities and Social Sciences
35 (13.0%)

Supplementary programmes:
TFP

15

Number of SFBs/variations/supplementary
programmes currently funded

Natural Sciences
67 (24.8%)

Life Sciences
115 (42.6%)

Distribution of currently funded SFBs by discipline

Previously published in
Spektrum der Wissenschaft:Research Training Groupsof the DeutscheFor­schungsgemeinschaft,Spektrum der Wissenschaft, July 2005

Promoting Excellent
Researchers Today for the
Science of Tomorrow: The
Emmy Noether Programme,
Spektrum der Wissenschaft,
January 2006

24

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German
Research Foundation) is the central, self-governing
research funding organisation that promotes research atuniversities and other publicly financed research institutions in Germany. It promotes research in all fields ofscience and the humanities. Scientific and academic excellence, the advancement of young researchers, genderequality, interdisciplinarity, and internationality are key
elements in the work of the DFG. In 2006 the DFG had atotal budget of €1.38 billion.

www.dfg.de/en

Imprint: Published by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Bonn ❙ Coordinator: Dr. Regina Nickel, Programme Officer, ResearchCentres Division ❙ Editorial Concept: Mediakonzept (www.mediakonzept.com), Düsseldorf ❙ Writers: Dieter Beste, Marion
Kälke ❙ English Translation: SciTech Communications, Heidelberg ❙ Cover: Andreas Rzadkowsky ❙ Design: Lutz Stolz