DFG to set up 17 collaborative research centres with €132M funding

The centres begin operations in January 2010. Six of the 17 new collaborations are trans-regional projects which will be distributed across different locations. As of January 2010, the DFG will be funding 244 Collaborative Research Centres in total.

The new Collaborative Research Centres include CRC/Transregio 80, “From Electronic Correlations to Functionality,” in which processes and instruments are to be developed that will open up new avenues in the study of the electronic properties of complex homogenous and inhomogeneous systems.

By combining experimental and theoretical methods, the researchers in Augsburg and Munich plan to establish a forum for basic and application-oriented research on electronic correlations. The goal is to understand, develop, produce and characterise systems with modern electronic properties.

Meanwhile, CRC/Transregio 63 will study, “Integrated Chemical Processes in Liquid Multiphase Systems,” to further the development of efficient production processes from raw material to purified product on the basis of chemical reactions that are performed in liquid multiphase systems.

The scientists, from the Technical University of Berlin and from Dortmund and Magdeburg, will combine a bottom-up method – in which the reaction leads to the overall process – and a top-down approach – in which the requirements for individual process steps are formulated for different process variants.

CRC 852, “Nutrition and Intestinal Microbiota – Host Interaction in the Pig,” will take an interdisciplinary approach to studying the effect of nutrition on intestinal function and animal health. The researchers at the Free University in Berlin aim as a result to come up with more efficient treatments for swine diseases. In particular, they seek to achieve greater efficiency in animal husbandry without the use of antibiotics.