FOREWORD

The year 2007 was an extraordinary year for us in many ways. Initial successes were achieved as regards the intended and promoted cultivation of a competitive and top-level profile for research at the university, the Excellence Initiative brought with it a special challenge, and it was especially exciting to witness acceptance of the activities of the Research Academy Leipzig (RAL) as a kind of “structural umbrella” for the qualification process for our doctoral candidates.

Once again, the Universität Leipzig proved its competitiveness in the area of research. There was a special challenge in January 2007 within the framework of the 2nd round of the Federal and State-Wide Excellence Initiative for Application to the Excellence Cluster “Felix Klein Center for Mathematical Sciences and their Application“ and the graduate school “BuildMoNa. Leipzig School of Natural Sciences – Building with Molecules and Nano-objects“. Leipzig was thereby the only university from Saxony represented at this level of the competition. On 19 October 2007, the authorising committee decided to fund the graduate school for five years with over 1 million Euros annually. This success is extremely significant for the further development of our University as an internationally visible research site and designated educational site for junior researchers in science.
A further significant perspective for our research strategy is offered by the Excellence Initiative of the State of Saxony, in which the Universität Leipzig participated in 2007 with six drafts in six applications. As regards three of these drafts, the University was challenged to submit for the next round of applications. Since the Excellence Initiative of the Free State is targeted at promotion of top-level technology clusters (i.e., economically oriented), it is primarily projects-generators from the Natural Sciences, Medicine and Computer Technology/Mathematics who apply.

The process of cultivation of competitive and top-level profiles within our six top-level research areas, which are capable of proving themselves as self-developing, strongly-funded and inter-disciplinary research associations over the long-term, has been considerably stimulated by this Excellence Initiative. With the passing of the model-rulings by the Academic Senate, the internal University basis for their activities was established, which was then to be fleshed out by the respectively involved faculties and the University administration through agreed-upon foundational goals.

The Research Academy Leipzig (RAL) began their work in December of 2006 as a comprehensive/overlapping facility for the structured promotion of junior researchers. As a basis for our research strategy, it will be occupied primarily with development of the qualification of international doctoral candidates. Currently, the RAL comprises the Graduate Center for Mathematics/Computer Science and Graduate Center for Life Sciences and the Graduate Center for Humanities and Social Sciences. An overlapping qualification programme was implemented, which is being continuously developed through participation by the doctoral candidates.

In the year 2007 as well, the German Research Community (DFG) was the most important promoter of University research. It is particularly satisfying for the Universität Leipzig that the DFG, in result of the expert appraisals, will fund two important projects.

• The Authorising Committee of the DFG made a decision regarding the implementation and financing of the special research area 762 “Functionality of Oxidic Interfaces” in its meeting on 20 and 21 November 2007 within the speaker’s committee of the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg 01.01.2008. The SFB 762, funded over the next four years with approximately ten million Euros, is a mutual initiative of the Universities of Halle-Wittenberg, Leipzig and Magdeburg as well as the Max Planck Institute for Micro-Structure Physics in Halle, which is active in the generation of special nano-structures with new functionalities.
• The Saxony research group 877 commenced with its work “From Local Constraints to Macroscopic Transport“ on 1 November 2007, in which the speakers’ committee of both the Universities of Leipzig and Chemnitz are participating. The members, originating in the areas of Experimental and Theoretical Physics, are involved in elemental transport processes in materials with complex spatial and energetic structures, e.g. diffusion in porous structures or biological membranes, in which the borderline case of a stable equilibrium of statistical observations has heretofore not been (or insufficiently) given. It is also expected that new information regarding transport mechanisms at the nano-metric scale will be generated, which are to establish the basis for developments in novel nano- technological and bio-technological applications.

In an itemisation of these obvious successes, one must not forget that the respective pre-requisites had often been previously established in multi-year, well-grounded, uninterrupted and, often times, non-spectacular research work.

Within the various University rankings, a central role has been assumed by the quantity of raised third-party funds and, in particular in this case, the share of third-party funding from evaluated projects in the assessment of the research. With a total of 60.9 million Euros raised, the best results ever have been achieved. As a reflection of scientific excellence in chosen scientific fields, the University considers that the share of EU, Federal and DFG projects evaluated in competitive proceedings - amounting to 57% in reference to the total emergence of third-party funds - is quite high. The DFG continues to be – with a share of 24% - the most important third-party fund-giver for the University.

The raising of third-party funding also opens up for the University the possibility to employ additional personnel for the processing of research projects. 1,165 employment contracts for the year 2007 represent a continued increase vis-à-vis the previous year (previous best result: 1,038 employment contracts).

With these results from the year 2007 and in anticipation of the 600-year anniversary for the University in 2009, the Universität Leipzig is in a good position to achieve its basic goal of becoming a leading European research University by means of further development of the top-level research areas, and by upgrading the structured doctoral candidate qualification process over the next 5 to 10 years.