On the previous Wednesday, the 22 voting members of the Academic Senate of Freie Universität Berlin voted to nominate the two candidates for re-election. Fifteen members voted in favor of the literary scholar, Professor Alt, four against, and there were three abstentions. The nomination of the candidate for executive vice president was equally clear: twelve members of the Senate voted for the candidacy of the pharmacologist Professor Schäfer-Korting, six against, and there were four abstentions. Nine affirmative votes were necessary for the nomination of each candidate.

The election for both offices is scheduled to take place during a meeting of the extended Academic Senate on April 30, 2014. The four-year term of office of the current president, Professor Peter-André Alt, will end on June 2, 2014.

 

Prof. Dr. Peter-André Alt

A native of Berlin, Peter-André Alt (born in 1960) studied German language and literature, political science, history, and philosophy at Freie Universität. He earned his doctorate in 1984 and completed the habilitation process in 1993. Since 1995, Alt has been a full professor of German language and literature, first at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (1995 – 2002), then at the University of Würzburg (2002 –2005), and since 2005 at Freie Universität Berlin. Alt has published numerous books on the literary culture of the 17th, 18th, and 20th centuries, including works on the aesthetics of evil, the literary and cultural history of dreams, the Enlightenment, Friedrich Schiller, and Franz Kafka. In 2005 he received the Marbach Schiller Prize for his two-volume biography of Schiller, and in 2008 he was awarded an Opus Magnum grant from the Volkswagen Foundation and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation to conclude his monograph on the Aesthetics of Evil. From 2007 to 2009 Alt was the dean of the Department of Philosophy and Humanities and from 2007 to 2010 a member of the Academic Senate of Freie Universität Berlin and director of the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies that was established at Freie Universität as part of the German Excellence Initiative. Since 2008 he has been the director of Dahlem Research School. Peter-André Alt has been the president of Freie Universität Berlin since June 3, 2010, and in July 2012 he was also elected president of the German Schiller Society. Since 2013 Peter-André Alt has been the deputy chairperson of the German U15, an association of German research-oriented universities.

 

Prof. Dr. Monika Schäfer-Korting

Prof. Dr. Monika Schäfer-Korting, born in 1952 in Giessen, studied pharmacy at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, where she earned her doctorate in 1977 under the supervision of Professor Ernst Mutschler. After a postdoctoral period in pharmacology and toxicology at TU Munich, she completed the habilitation process in 1989 at Goethe University. In 1994 Schäfer-Korting was appointed a professor of pharmacology and toxicology, a position that was newly established at Freie Universität Berlin's Department of Pharmacy. From 2003 to 2006 she coordinated a research network sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) called “Validation study for the testing for skin penetration using biotechnologically produced skin models" (FKZ 0312881), and from 2002 from 2008 she was the spokesperson for a DFG-funded research group dealing with “Innovative active pharmaceutical ingredients and carrier systems: Integrative optimization for the treatment of inflammatory and hyper-poliferative diseases" (FG 463). Currently, Schäfer-Korting is a member of the BMBF research network within the subproject 0316008B in the joint project "Verification of metabolic competence and pre-validation of the Comet assay to selected 3D full-thickness skin models" and a project leader in the DFG-funded CRC 1112 "Nanocarriers: Architecture, transportation and targeted administration of active compounds for therapeutic applications." On April 1, 2014, she will take over the management of the BMBF-funded Berlin-Brandenburg Research Platform B²3R with an integrated Research Training Group "Innovation in 3R Research – Genetic Engineering, Tissue Engineering and Bioinformatik." In 2007, for their achievements in the development of lipid nanoparticles, Schäfer-Korting and Prof. Dr. Rainer H. Müller (Pharmaceutical Technology) were awarded the WissensWerte Transfer Prize from the Technologiestiftung Berlin e.V., a nonprofit association supporting technological developments. In 2008 she won the Dorothy Hegarty Award for the best published paper in the journal ATL A: Alternatives to Laboratory Animals. In addition, she is the chair of the scientific advisory board of the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment Berlin (BfR). Schäfer-Korting's first term as vice president was from 1997 to 1999. She was elected again in 2007, and since 2010 she has been the executive vice president of Freie Universität Berlin. Her areas of responsibility include professorial appointments, medicine, and life sciences.