Excellent Research.
In 2007 the University of Freiburg became one of nine top universities in Germany to be honored in the Excellence Initiative. It was successful in all three funding lines of this competition (Graduate School, Cluster of Excellence, Institutional Strategy „Windows for Research“) and thus enjoys the highest level of funding.
Graduate School
The „Spemann Graduate School of Biology and Medicine“ (SGBM) had already been approved for funding a year earlier in the first round of the competition. The school offers an outstanding, interdisciplinary PhD program for young scientists from various disciplines.
Cluster of Excellence
BIOSS, "Centre for Biological Signalling Studies," selected for funding in 2007, studies the complex organization of signaling processes in and between cells. The cluster pools the expertise of almost 70 outstanding scientists and combines modern analytical methods with innovative techniques from synthetic biology.
Institutional Strategy
The goals of Freiburg’s Institutional Strategy, „Windows for Research,“ are embodied by three institutions. The international research institute „Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies“ (FRIAS) attracts qualified junior researchers as well as internationally renowned scientists and visiting scholars to Freiburg, thus enabling the University of Freiburg to take a place among the top research universities in the world. The FRIAS is concentrating its funding initially on four areas: literature and linguistics, materials research, history, and life sciences. The life sciences are an amalgam of biochemistry, molecular cell biology, applied sciences, neurosciences, mathematics, physics and the humanities, and are thus a successful and internationally recognized model for interdisciplinary teaching and learning in and of themselves. The International Graduate Academy (IGA) provides transdisciplinary support for junior researchers in the doctoral phase, while the Research Group Program provides funding for those in the postdoctoral phase.