DRESDEN-concept: New research alliance to strengthen Dresden as center of research and academic education

Vernetzung
(c) Stephanie Hofschlaeger / PIXELIO (www.pixelio.de)

The Technische Universität Dresden and research institutions located in Dresden are planning a unique research alliance in order to strengthen Dresden as a center of research and academic education. The city of Dresden has an extraordinary high number of institutions of all major German research societies (Fraunhofer, Max Planck, Helmholtz, and Leibniz Association). The partners of the alliance intend to make greater use of the synergies from various cooperations between these research institutions and the Technische Universität Dresden.

The research center Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (FZD) is significantly involved in this process, which has been named accordingly: DRESDEN-concept (Dresden Research and Education Synergies for the Development of Excellence and Novelty). The DRESDEN-concept envisions that the museums located in Dresden also join the research alliance. The research alliance will be coordinated by the DRESDEN board, in which all partners are represented equally.

The core aim of the research alliance is to create a common research and university education space. Research, postgraduate education, and scientific infrastructure are the three columns of the new alliance, extending the hitherto multiple cooperations. Only in 2008, the research center Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf and the Technische Universität Dresden signed a new contract of cooperation, expanding their collaborations.

In the near future, the partners of the alliance plan to define and develop key topics for research in Dresden. One of them is energy efficiency, which is to be pursued in the “Dresdner Innovationszentrum Energieeffizienz” (Energy Efficiency – Center of Innovation in Dresden) founded in February 2009 between the Technische Universität Dresden and the research association Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

With a strong research alliance, the partners hope to pull internationally renowned experts as professors to Dresden. But they also have the second round of the German “Exzellenzinitiative” in their minds, a nationwide competition for excellence in research, hoping that the new research alliance will benefit the Technische Universität Dresden in this highly prestigious contest of German universities, which promises millions of euros for funding of research.

Contact persons of the DRESDEN-concept:

Contact at FZD:
Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Roland Sauerbrey
Scientific Director
Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf
Phone: ++49 (0) 351 260 2625