A conversation with DFG’s head of international cooperation Jörg Schneider on its very bottom-up approach to cross-border science
Logo of German Research Foundation. Photo credits: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Last week Science|Business sat down with Jörg Schneider, head of international cooperation at the German Research Foundation (DFG) to talk about why Germany’s biggest public research funding agency believes in the power of international research cooperation.
The philosophy is simple: “Our task as a national funding agency is to help researchers to work together with the best partners for them. If the researchers need partners abroad, then it's our job to make this possible,” says Schneider. “All our programmes, all our rules have to make sure that international cooperation is possible.”
The DFG funds plenty of international projects each year, but getting a clear picture is difficult due to the fund’s bottom-up nature. There’s little money dedicated specifically to…
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