The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) has two new Vice Presidents: at its session on Wednesday, 1 July 2026, held in connection with the DFG annual meeting in Bonn, the DFG General Assembly elected Professor Dr.-Ing. Lutz Mädler of the University of Bremen and Professor Dr. Christian Walter of LMU Munich to a four-year term of office on the Executive Committee of Germany’s largest research funding organisation and central self-governing organisation for science and the humanities. The new members’ term of office will begin on 1 January 2027. They will succeed legal scholar Professor Dr. Marietta Auer and engineer Professor Dr.-Ing. Hans Hasse, who step down from the Executive Committee at the end of the year.
The newly elected Vice President Lutz Mädler is Professor of Particles and Process Engineering at the University of Bremen and Director of the Process Engineering Department at the Leibniz Institute for Materials Engineering – IWT. His research focuses on the production, handling and formulation of particles, as well as the design and investigation of particle interfaces. He has received numerous awards for his work, most notably the DFG’s Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2017 and an ERC Advanced Grant in 2018. Mädler served as spokesperson for the Collaborative Research Centre “Colored States” from 2016 to 2021 and has chaired the DFG Priority Programme “Hetero-Aggregates” since 2020. Since 2026, he has also been a member of the Steering Board of the Cluster of Excellence “The Martian Mindset: A Scarcity-Driven Engineering Paradigm” at the University of Bremen. Mädler has long been active in research self-governance. He has served on the DFG review board “Process Engineering, Technical Chemistry” since 2020 and has chaired it for the past two years. Following his election as Vice President, he will step down from the review board at the end of the year.
The other newly elected Vice President, Christian Walter, has held the Chair of Public International Law and Public Law at LMU Munich since 2011. His research interests include German and European fundamental rights protection, constitutional law relating to religion, constitutional procedural law and the law of international organisations. Walter has received the Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society and the Ruprecht Karls Prize awarded by the Heidelberg University Foundation. He is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities and also serves on the board of the German Society of International Law, of which he is currently vice chairman. From 2007 to 2011, he was also a project leader in the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics in Pre-Modern and Modern Cultures” at the University of Münster. Walter, too, has a long record of service in research self-governance. He was a member of the DFG review board “Jurisprudence” from 2016 to 2024 and has served on the Senate of LMU Munich since 2025.
Following the elections, DFG President Professor Dr. Katja Becker paid tribute to the outgoing Vice Presidents Marietta Auer and Hans Hasse.
Hans Hasse steps down at his own request at the end of 2026 after serving two years of his second term in office. From the outset of his tenure, he championed DFG funding for universities of applied sciences, and as chair of the Senate ad hoc working group he played a key role in shaping the Research Impulses (RI) funding programme, chairing the meetings to select draft proposals and serving as rapporteur for several RI reviews. Last year, together with Axel Brakhage, he also assumed joint leadership of the Senate working group on the financial situation and funding portfolio. In addition, as a member of the Senate Ad Hoc Working Group on the Digital Turn, he has contributed to the preparation of key DFG position papers, most recently the Guideline on the Use of AI in the Review Process.
Marietta Auer, whose first term of office ends on 31 December 2026, likewise opted not to stand for re-election. A specialist in private law and the international and interdisciplinary foundations of law at Justus Liebig University Giessen, she chaired the DFG working group on research-oriented equity and diversity standards, advancing the implementation of these standards through public workshops and panel discussions. She also served on the DFG Sustainability Commission and worked with the review boards to strengthen the integration of sustainability in DFG funding activities. What is more, her legal expertise informed the revision of the DFG membership procedure and the amendments to the statutes governing DFG membership.
In addition to DFG President Katja Becker and the newly elected Vice Presidents Lutz Mädler and Christian Walter, the DFG Executive Committee comprises molecular biologist Professor Dr. Axel A. Brakhage, art historian Professor Dr. Johannes Grave, physicist Professor Dr. Karin Jacobs, computer scientist Professor Dr. Kerstin Schill, chemist Professor Dr. Peter H. Seeberger, physician Professor Dr. Britta Siegmund and economist Professor Dr. Caren Sureth-Sloane. The President of Stifterverband is a member of the Executive Committee in an advisory capacity by virtue of their office. DFG Secretary General Dr. Heide Ahrens likewise participates in the meetings of the Executive Committee in an advisory capacity.
The Vice Presidents are elected by the General Assembly for a maximum of two terms of office of four years each.
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