The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) is establishing seven new Research Units. This was decided by the DFG Joint Committee on the recommendation of the Senate. The new Research Units will receive total funding of approximately €33 million, including a 22-percent programme allowance for indirect project costs. In addition to establishing these seven new groups, the decision was made to extend the funding of three Research Units for an additional period.
Research Units enable researchers to pursue current and pressing issues in their areas of research and take innovative directions in their work. They are funded for up to eight years. In total, the DFG is currently funding 188 Research Units, ten Clinical Research Units and 17 Centres for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences. Clinical Research Units are also characterised by the close connection between research and clinical work, while Centres for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences are specifically tailored to forms of work in the humanities and social sciences.
The new research networks in detail
(in alphabetical order of the spokespersons’ higher education institutions)
Infrastructures ensure the provision of life’s essentials – but they also create complex sociocultural networks of dependency. The Research Unit
Infrastructure: Aesthetics and Supply, comprising scholars in theatre studies, literary studies, media studies and political philosophy, examines the forms these dependencies take and explores alternative infrastructural practices. The researchers are also concerned with aesthetic criteria – these shape the space of possibility for what is considered desirable or feasible as infrastructure, and thus influence how we live together. The research focus will be on infrastructures from 1900 to the present day, especially those shaped by the extraction of raw materials (e.g. in mining) and by processes of deindustrialisation. (Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Jörn Etzold, University of Bochum)
So-called stimulus-responsive luminescent coordination compounds (STIL-COCOs) are compounds whose properties – such as colour or brightness – can be changed by external stimuli such as pressure. For this reason, they are of great interest in terms of the development of photonic applications, including anti-counterfeiting methods, data storage and quantum communication. However, there is currently no convincing design strategy to achieve a specific property change in response to a given stimulus. The Research Unit
Stimulus-responsive luminescent coordination compounds - STIL-COCOs aims to establish structure-property relationships for efficient STIL-COCOs, thereby paving the way for new technological platforms. (Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Andreas Steffen, TU Dortmund)
Environmental changes such as the threat posed by predators or extreme heat require continuous adjustment of an organism’s physiological state and behaviour. These sensory responses are usually regulated through interactions between the autonomic and central nervous systems and can involve changes in heart function or attention. The adaptive processes are mediated by a small number of messengers that act on a large set of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) within cells. The Research Unit Dynamic
Integration of GPCR signaling to control organ function and animal behavior will seek to identify the fundamental principles of GPCR signalling in various animal models in order to understand the regulatory patterns behind such adaptive processes. (Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Jörn Simon Wiegert, University of Heidelberg)
Many age-related neurodegenerative diseases are caused by misfolded proteins that form aggregates or fibrils, or that accumulate in biomolecular condensates – membraneless cellular structures made of macromolecules. It has recently become clear that molecular chaperones – proteins that assist other proteins in folding correctly, being transported and remaining stable – play a key role in this process. However, the underlying mechanisms are still not fully understood. The Research Unit
Chaperone-mediated regulation of the emergence of disease-causing amyloids inside biomolecular condensates aims to understand how chaperones regulate condensate-forming proteins and how the folding of these proteins is connected to this regulation. (Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Janine Kirstein, Leibniz Institute on Aging – Fritz-Lipmann-Institut (FLI), Jena)
City boundaries often mark an arbitrary division between an urban interior shaped by intensive human control and a rural exterior shaped more strongly by natural, biophysical processes. In reality, these two spaces have always been closely interconnected, and increasing pressure on natural resources is intensifying rural-urban transformation processes, particularly in many regions of the Global South. The Research Unit
Sustainable Rurbanity – Resources, Society and Regulatory Systems will address this phenomenon based on case studies in urban agglomerations in India, Ghana and Morocco. The aim is to investigate the mechanisms, consequences and governance processes of rurbanity using specific examples. (Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Andreas Bürkert, University of Kassel)
Social interaction among animals is often based on the exchange of vocalisations that are vital for survival and reproduction. But our understanding of the basic neural mechanisms that govern the production, learning and coordination of vocal expressions among individual vertebrates remains limited. The Research Unit
Neural basis of vocal communication will focus on the brain networks that influence vocalisations in fish, birds and mammals. It also aims to identify shared principles underlying how different vertebrate vocal communication systems function – and uncover species-specific adaptations shaped by ecological and social factors. (Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Steffen Hage, University of Tübingen)
The Research Unit
Asset Allocation and Asset Pricing in Regulated Markets and Institutions will examine the significant impact of risk and uncertainty on decision-making in financial markets and the real economy. Investigations will centre in particular on how uncertainty and risk awareness affect the allocation of assets and the pricing of financial products in regulated environments. To this end, the researchers plan to develop novel quantitative models to address regulatory uncertainty, define metrics for evaluating these factors, and analyse the effects of such uncertainty on markets and institutions. (Spokesperson: Professor Dr. An Chen, University of Ulm)
The research networks extended for a second funding period (in alphabetical order of the spokespersons’ higher education institutions and with references to the project descriptions in the DFG’s online database GEPRIS):
Research Unit ImmunoChick- Unravelling the avian immune response in the context of infection (Spokesperson: Professor Benedikt Bertold Kaufer, Ph.D., FU Berlin)
https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/434524639?language=en
Research Unit Disrupt – Evade – Exploit: Gene expression and host response programming in DNA virus infection (DEEP-DV). (Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Nicole Brigitte Fischer, University of Hamburg)
https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/443644894
Research Unit The Dynamic Deep Subsurface of High-Energy Beaches (DynaDeep) (Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Gudrun Massmann, University of Oldenburg)
https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/431491505