FOREWORD

The development of the Universität Leipzig into a leading European research university and internationally renowned teaching institution for a new generation of researchers was continued vigorously in 2005.

The analysis of competency clusters, presented in December 2004, significantly contributed to the narrowing down of ten general research areas into six Top-Level Research Areas, in which several faculties collaborate with non-university research institutions. Based on this framework, the university responded to the call for participation in the Excellency Initiative with application outlines for three Graduate Schools for the development of young reseachers, four Excellency Clusters for the development of advanced research, and an outline for the project-based future development of advanced research, submitted to the National Research Foundation DFG in September and October of 2005. Even though the university was only asked to submit formal applications for the Centre for Regenerative Therapies, all ideas and projects were an important step in the direction of developing an internationally competitive research profile.

The effort to develop new research associations within the university was also continued beyond the framework of the Excellency Initiative, and bore fruit, for example, in the successful application of the Free State of Saxony as location for the planned Eastern Europe Centre for Economy and Culture, which was developed by the Universität Leipzig and the city of Leipzig together. In 2005, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, which had been entrusted with this project by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, decided to locate the “Central and Eastern Europe Centre” (Mittel- und Osteuropa Zentrum MOEZ) of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in Leipzig. A decisive factor for the selection of Leipzig was its broadly diverse research potential on Central and Eastern European topics, as well as the high level of cooperation between university and non-university research, and the close collaboration with the city of Leipzig and regional research centres, companies, and cultural institutions. Another decisive contributing factor to the successful application was the existence of the Competency Centre for Central and Eastern Europe Leipzig (KOMOEL), which was founded following an initiative of the Universität Leipzig in 2003.
Within the context of its participation in the call for a DFG Research Centre for Regenerative Therapies, the Universität Leipzig reached the final round of three, and was asked in early 2005 to submit a proposal. It was prepared together with researchers from the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, and concentrated on three main aspects: clinical medicine, molecular and cell biology, and materials science. As a result of the quality of their proposals and their outstanding presentations, the international advisory committee judged all three finalists (Berlin, Dresden, and Leipzig) as excellent possible locations for regenerative therapies. Even though the National Research Foundation DFG decided in September 2005 in favour of Dresden, the other proposals from Berlin and Leipzig were assessed so well that the DFG offered to accept them as proposals in the context of its Excellency Cluster initiative. In addition, the DFG offered the possibility to fund one of the remaining proposals in the form of a “Translation Centre for Regenerative Medicine.”

INTERNEURO is the acronym for the new Postgraduate Research Unit “Interdisciplinary Approaches in the Cellular Neurosciences,” funded by the DFG with a sum of EUR 2.25 million. INTERNEURO brings together 14 interdisciplinary projects in which a working group from medicine or biology collaborates with working groups from physics or mathematics respectively.

The approval of the Postgraduate Research Unit “Function of Attention in Cognition” is another confirmation of Leipzig as an outstanding location for cognitive sciences and neuroscience. Like the Postgraduate Research Unit INTERNEURO, it is part of the International PhD-Programme “From Signal Processing to Behaviour” and includes eight working groups from the university and the Max Planck Institutes for Human Cognitive and Brain Science and for Evolutionary Anthropology. Two proposals for the institution of DFG Research Groups which began their work in 2006 were successfully submitted by university researchers.

The DFG Research Group “Analysis and Stochastics in Complex Physical Systems” will intensify the interaction between analysis and probability theory in order to study physical systems with random input and high complexity. It will combine and further develop ideas and methods from both fields in order to gain results that would lie beyond the possibilities of the individual disciplines alone.

The DFG Research Group “Grammar and Processing of Verbal Arguments” explores the relationship between verb and argument as the core of grammar. The interdisciplinary examination of argument structure, realisation, encoding, and interpretation is expected to yield new findings relating to the organisation of grammar and its processing components in the human brain.

This list of visible successes should not obscure the fact that their basis often lies in research that develops continuously over many years and is often not very spectacular in the beginning.

In the evaluation of university research activities in different university rankings, the amount of external funding especially for refereed competitive projects occupies a central role. With a figure of about EUR 54 million in external funding, the university almost reached last year's result. The university regards the fact that the share of projects refereed by the European Union, the Federal Government, and the National Research Foundation DFG, is again high at 55 % of total external funding as proof of academic excellence in selected fields. With a share of 24 %, the DFG remains the most important source of external funding for the university.

External funding allows the university to hire additional personnel for specific research projects. With 964 contracts in 2005, the Universität Leipzig only insignificantly remained under its best result of 996 contracts in 2003.

With the results of 2005, the Universität Leipzig is well prepared to reach its central goal in the area of research through the development of six Top-Level Research Areas and the expansion of a structured further qualification of doctoral students within the next five to ten years. Furthermore, continued efforts aimed at strengthening research and creating attractive opportunities for doctoral students will serve to increase the international influence of the Universität Leipzig in its coming anniversary year 2006 and far beyond.