The University's Research Report for the year 2000 comprises (as it has done since 1996) a booklet documenting the general section, and a CD-ROM with more detailed information about each faculty. It is thus a mine of useful information on the research activities pursued by the 14 faculties at Alma Mater Lipsiensis. It also contains a survey of the University's significant interdisciplinary research programmes, patent applications, its participation in exhibitions and conferences, as well as prizes and other awards received by its members. As last year, the main parts of the Research Report are also available in English.

All the – mostly inter-faculty – research groups and projects supported by the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the central public funding organization for academic research in Germany), the BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research), the SMWK (Ministry of the Higher Education, Research and Culture of the Free State of Saxony) and other backers successfully continued their work in 2000. The University‘s new Interdisciplinary Bioinformatics Centre is one of five such bodies throughout Germany to be funded by the DFG. The two Centres of Excellence "Phenomena at Miniaturisation Limits" and "Chemical Signal and Biological Answer" successfully completed their second phase of funding on 31 December 2000, as did the Doctoral Programmes "The Ambivalence of Occidentalisation" and "Cognitive Sciences".

In 2000, scientists from the Universität Leipzig worked on 33 projects funded by the EU, a sharp increase on the 22 in 1999; 10 of these projects are being co-ordinated by members of the University. The number of projects funded under the DFG's individual grants programme (Normalverfahren) rose from 366 in 1998 and 378 in 1999 to 403 in 2000. Total external funding has continuously grown from some DM54 million in 1995 to DM65.5 million in 2000 – an increase which is largely accounted for by the higher funding for the Faculty of Medicine. A similarly optimistic trend is the rise in the number of publications from 2,975 in 1995 to 4,936 in 2000. As in the previous year, the main backer was the DFG, followed by the BMBF, industry and the Free State of Saxony. The number of higher degrees (Promotionen, Habilitationen) remained at the same high level.

In 2000, the first financial resources were received for the BBZ (Biotechnological-Biomedical Centre Leipzig) under the Free State of Saxony's Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Initiative, and were used for early investment. The approval of the scientific concept of the BBZ's university section paved the way for the appointment of six additional professors and the creation of six junior research groups in biotechnology.

The interdisciplinary competence and excellence described in this Research Report, which often span the barriers between the natural sciences, the humanities and medicine, and whose quality can and should be judged (albeit not solely) by the amount of third-party funding acquired, illustrates that research at our University is extremely diverse and powerful, and needs to be consolidated or - even better - extended.

Professor Dr. Volker Bigl
Rector

Professor Dr. Helmut Papp
Vice-Rector (Research)