The Berlin/Potsdam Earth sciences community enter the final round of the DFG Excellence Initiative with a full proposal for a Graduate School

02.03.2011 | Potsdam: In severe competition with a total of 227 submitted pre-proposals for new projects within the framework of the DFG Excellence Initiative, the Berlin/Potsdam Earth Sciences community has qualified for the final round of this year’s grant applications with a project  proposal for a new Graduate School. This result was announced at today’s press conference of the German Research Foundation DFG and the German Council of Science and Humanities in Bonn. The Graduate School application centers around sustainable land use and the consequences of global change. The decision is also most relevant to the geoscientific coordination platform Geo.X. “With respect to the Potsdam-Berlin area, there is no comparable density of earth sciences across Europe”, says Professor Dr. Reinhard Hüttl, Speaker of Geo.X and Scientific Executive Director of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. “For scientists, the Excellence Initiative opens the possibility to make use of the geoscientific potential within the region. The challenges of global change for human society require new ways of thinking and new solutions that can be realized only via large-scale cooperation.”

Through the FutureLand Graduate School to be led by the Humboldt University Berlin – the subject of the second proposal – a team of young scientists in the Berlin/Potsdam research community will address issues in connection with sustainable land use. In the context of a growing, ever more affluent global population and advancing climate change, sustainable global land use has now become one of the greatest challenges facing human society. The problem of how to feed the world, the dramatic decline in biodiversity, the increased competition for land and water resources along with the resulting socio-political instabilities are among the issues directly linked to sustainable land use. The approach adopted by the FutureLand Graduate School, thus, entails a close interweaving of Earth sciences and social sciences: the new generation of scientists will learn to consider socio-cultural factors in the context of interacting regional processes and global developments, based on in-depth unidisciplinary research and interdisciplinary thinking. The other Geo.X partners involved in the Graduate School proposal are the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and the Museum of Natural History – Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Research at Humboldt University Berlin. Further participants include the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe (IAMO), the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), the Leibniz Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning (IRS), the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), and other international partners.

The successful pre-proposal follows the Geo.X strategy to link the earth sciences with other scientific disciplines to obtain relevant contributions to research on the System Earth-Man.

The successful new applications have to be submitted as full proposal by September 1st, 2011. The full proposal will be evaluated by international review panels by February 2012. The final decision upon which Graduate School will then receive a 5-year-funding from November 2012 onwards will be made in June 2012.

Geo.X is a joint platform supported by the Free University Berlin, the Humboldt University Berlin, the Museum of Natural History, the Technical University Berlin, the University of Potsdam and the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.

Contact persons:

Prof. Dr. P. Hostert, Humboldt University Berlin, Speaker FutureLand, Tel. 030-20936805

Dr. Hildegard Gödde, Aministrative Office Geo.X, Tel. 0331-2881026