Freie Universität Berlin Winner in Competition of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
Up to 130,000 Euros in Ideas Competition, "Research Alumni of Universities in Germany"
№ 271/2012 from Sep 25, 2012
Freie Universität Berlin is one of three universities winning an ideas competition sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and devoted to "Research Alumni of Universities in Germany." Apart from Freie Universität, the University of Cologne and TU Munich are the winners of the second round of the competition. These universities will each receive up to 130,000 euros to be used for implementing their proposals. Selected from among 14 proposals in the second round, the winners are deemed to be most suitable for facilitating particularly active and long-term cooperation between the universities and their research alumni abroad. The awards ceremony will take place in Berlin on January 17, 2013.
Research alumni, as the name suggests, are international scientists or scholars who in the past spent a period of time conducting research at a German university and are now continuing their work outside of Germany. Freie Universität Berlin's proposal suggests a framework for increasingly including its international research alumni in the university's alumni work in general and for developing specific services for this target group. The idea is that the new alumni program will be tailored to thematic and research-oriented needs of faculty and to facilitate professional exchange and networking.
"We see our concept for research alumni as the next step in the evolution of our award-winning 'International Network University' future development concept," said the president of Freie Universität Berlin, Professor Peter-André Alt. He further explained that targeted support for young scholars and scientists is an important part of the plan, which aims to promote research stays at Freie Universität by young researchers from the research alumni's universities, as well as research stays for junior scholars from Freie at the universities of our international research alumni.
The competition is part of the International Research Marketing project sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, the German Research Foundation, and the Fraunhofer Society. It is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of its "Research in Germany" initiative.