SmartProSys research initiative may submit full application for Cluster of Excellence
Dear colleagues, dear employees, dear students,
It was with great pleasure that we received the decision of the German Research Foundation DFG on Friday to invite the SmartProSys research initiative to submit a full proposal as part of the Cluster of Excellence funding line. On behalf of the university management, I would like to congratulate the entire team around Prof. Kai Sundmacher on this great research success and thank everyone for their great commitment!
This success is a joint effort by Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg and the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems. It was certainly also made possible because it is clearly a topic of the future with great social relevance. But above all, it is the extraordinary scientific expertise and outstanding interdisciplinary collaboration of the researchers involved that contributed to this success.
Scientists from the fields of process engineering, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, logistics, political science, economics and psychology are working together to replace fossil raw materials with renewable carbon sources and to transform energy-intensive process chains into completely closed cycles in the long term. The end result is a chemical industry based on biogenic residual and waste materials as well as recycled plastics and whose processes are powered exclusively by renewable energies.
The full application must be submitted by the end of August 2024, the final funding decision would be made in May 2025 and cluster funding would begin one year later, initially for seven years. It must be clear to the international jury that OVGU as a whole supports the application and sees it as a great opportunity for strategic development. The university management and the university committees will give the team their full support.
However, I would of course also like to take this opportunity to thank those who did not progress in this funding round. The term "failure" is completely out of place in the jury's decision last week. Out of 143 applications, only 41 reached the next round and many renowned university locations came away empty-handed. The Cognitive Vitality research initiative is an excellently positioned interdisciplinary research network with enormous potential. Here, too, a central social problem is being addressed and the team will place parts in other funding programs. We are also confident that the Productive Teaming initiative will further develop the collaboration between the central German universities of Chemnitz, Ilmenau and Magdeburg into a Collaborative Research Center/Transregio.
A clearly structured process and state funding in recent years have proven successful. The commitment of many university members, which was evident at all times, is also likely to have contributed to the success of this round of the Excellence Strategy. And finally, a little bit of luck is always needed in competitions of this magnitude. Let's keep our fingers crossed together!
Sincerely
Yours, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jens Strackeljan