The power behind German research (DFG)

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) The DFG is a German institution investing, training and collaborating to a degree that it is pushing for new discoveries at an impressive pace. The institution has been the government’s scientific mouthpiece, through both the highs and low points in its history, and today it is respected as a world leading voice in science and a pride of post war Germany.

By Richard Forsyth

In pursuit of scientific excellence

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orging ahead in science has never been a weak point for Germany, which is unafraid of investing in discovery, knowledge and innovation. The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, or DFG for short, is an association with members including some of the truly great research institutes in Germany, such as Max Planck Society, Helmholtz Association of German Research, Fraunhofer and many other research organisations. It boasts an annual budget of €3.2 billion, with heavy funding by the German Government, as well as EU funding and other donors.

In turn the DFG has been funding and supporting research for 80 years and is recognised on the international stage as a launchpad for ground-breaking scientific achievements. In 2017, the DFG funded approximately 32,500 research projects, a staggering investment into science and knowledge advancement.

The institute has the weighty task of being a link for scientific research for members of parliament and crucial decision-making organisations in Germany.

From a dark place to light Its history is very much entwined with Germany’s, both the good and the bad. For there is a dark spot in the bright light that is this scientific institution, one that the DFG acknowledges and analyses to this day with typically scientific rigour, not hiding from a time when science was abused to make extreme political views validated.

During and prior to the National Socialists coming to power in 1933, the institution, then known as Notgemeinschaft der

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Wissenschaft (NG) aligned itself to Nazi-research, including ethnographic research that would lead to polices linked with the Holocaust. Arguably, the NG did more than reinvent itself after the war as DFG, it forged itself into a spearhead for world leading science.

Having a past as it does, the institution may be at an advantage in spotting dangerous times ahead.

The President of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Prof. Dr. Peter Strohschneider began 2019 in an address, talking about ‘the endangerment of social cohesion’ and the shift from ‘solidarity to competition’ and how conditions including ‘the anarchy of the internet’ could promote authoritarian rather than democratic constitutions. As a place in time and space the DFG has a unique perspective of dangers in our present, learnt from the past.

This is relevant because one of the most challenging and important duties of the DFG is to foster interest, engagement and encourage public involvement in political discourse for questions relating to science and research. Keeping science in the public and governmental conversations is seen as of paramount importance, as is safeguarding the context of those interests.

Today, the DFG, whilst pioneering in German rooted science, has significant outreach and collaboration around the world, with a vested interest in recruitment of young researchers from all around the globe. There is healthy international cooperation among researchers.

This includes efforts to liaise with the foreign embassies’ science departments to share information in exchange sessions for diplomats and international delegations.

EU Research

The link between research and prosperity The DFG has become a very powerful and recognised hub for scientific research. It boasts nine strong funding programmes and celebrates 11 scientific prizes, including arguably the most important research funding award in Germany, namely the Gottfried Wilhem Leibniz Prize. This prestigious prize is awarded each year, since 1986 with a maximum of 10 recipients – each award is worth €2.5 million. In 2019 Prof. Dr. Sami Haddadin received an award for his pioneering research in robotics, and Prof. Dr. Brenda Schulman for her work in biochemistry and structural biology on the molecular mechanisms of the ubiquitin system.

The institution has in fact, a diverse number of responsibilities. As well as managing prizes, advising the German government and helping train researchers, the institution is also encouraging collaboration between researchers and the private sector to ensure projects can mature into solutions for industrial and business sectors.

Avoiding the so called ‘valley if death’ where research sometimes ends without momentum into the world beyond academia, pro active efforts to connect to industry are in effect.

This way Germany will be fuelled by knowledge, innovation and have ways to turn research into economic and industrial benefits, to maintain its highly competitive edge. The baton from research to industry is one loaded with power for economic strength.

In the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report in 2018, Germany was top in the ranks as the most innovative economy, with a score of 87.5 out of 100 for innovation capability – one of the 12 key pillars used as a guide to gauge a country’s productivity.

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It outperformed the US and they’re tipped as a leading light in the current escalating Fourth Industrial Revolution. It was highlighted in the report that it was the ‘sheer number of ideas’ that makes Germany an innovation powerhouse. That’s got to owe something to the output of research institutes such as DFG.

Investing in the future But at the heart of the DFG it is a commitment to pure science that counts, and a steadfast dedication to investing in worthy research projects. Recently, the DFG announced it would establish 14 new collaborative research centres (CRCs) to support top-level research in German universities. These CRCs are to receive around €164 million in funding for an initial four-year period. This is in parallel to the Grants Committee approving an extension of 27 existing CRCs for an additional funding period.

The new CRCs have ambitious aims that could have far reaching impacts, especially in the healthcare sector, with projects trying to better understand how the gut and liver interact, and another, forming deeper understanding of aortic diseases, and then there’s the project investigating the skin as a sensor and effector orchestrating local and systemic immunity.

Far from fringe science, these projects could have wide reaching effects. CRCs receive funding for a maximum of 12 years and from July 2019, the DFG is funding a total of 278 CRCs. The overall impacts of these robust investments and groundbreaking research projects will ensure considerable advances in human knowledge.

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