Free State of Saxony supports transition of Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf research center to Helmholtz Association

summary of the press release published by the Saxon State Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts on May 26, 2009

Eingangsgebäude

The Saxon State Government has agreed that the Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (FZD) research center should become a member of the Helmholtz Association from January 1, 2011 onwards. A corresponding contract will be signed between the State and the German Federal Government in summer 2009. In order to be able to successfully compete with the established Helmholtz centers, the Free State of Saxony provides the FZD research center with additional funding of 70 million euros between 2011 and 2014, announced Saxon State Minister for Higher Education, Research and the Arts, Dr. Eva-Maria Stange. The money will be used for instance to expand the FZD's ELBE electron linear accelerator into a national center for high-power radiation sources.

Currently, the FZD research center is a member of the Leibniz Society. As a member of the Helmholtz Association, the share of the Federal State of Germany in the core funding of the research center is going to increase from 50 to 90 %. The recommendation that the FZD research center should become a Helmholtz institution had been preceded by an evaluation of the FZD by the German Wissenschaftsrat in 2007.

Also in the future, research activities at the FZD research center will be dedicated to cancer research and nuclear safety research as well as to explore matter under extreme conditions. Upon transfer into the Helmholtz Association the center will likely to be named "Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf".