Over the next three years, the Einstein Foundation Berlin will fund top international researchers with a total of roughly seven million euros. The scientists hail from cities such as Princeton, Cambridge, Toronto and Mumbai and will begin their work in Berlin in 2016. They engage with topics ranging from the emergence of social inequality to the development of socio-cultural identity and the investigation of hereditary heart disorders.
Amongst the visiting researchers are 11 Einstein Visiting Fellows. The Einstein Visiting Fellowship supports scholars from abroad whose expertise complements top-level research already going on in Berlin. The longer-term goal is to integrate the new researchers into the local research community and expand Berlin’s international ties. To this end, the visiting fellows complete at least three research stays a year in Berlin, each lasting several weeks. Individual fellows have an annual budget of up to €150,000 to build up a pool of junior researchers and collaborate on joint projects with Berlin-based colleagues. Eligible applicants include the Berlin Clusters of Excellence, graduate schools, DFG Research Centres and Collaborative Research Centres. At present, there are 21 Einstein Visiting Fellows in total.
Furthermore, three Einstein BIH Visiting Fellows were approved. The Einstein BIH Visiting Fellows programme is a joint effort of the Stiftung Charité, an independent charitable foundation, and the Einstein Foundation Berlin. The Einstein BIH Visiting Fellowship recognises internationally renowned researchers, who support the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) with their scientific expertise and strengthen Berlin’s standing as an eminent location for scientific research in the long term. There are currently six Einstein BIH Visiting Fellows altogether.
Funding for the latest round of Einstein Visiting Fellows is provided by the Damp Stiftung (€2.85 million), Stiftung Charité (€1.35 million) and the State of Berlin. Starting in 2016, the Einstein Foundation will also sponsor one Einstein Research Fellow, three Einstein International Postdoctoral Fellows, one Einstein Research Project, two Einstein Circles and one research conference.
Here are the details on the new group of Einstein fellows and projects:
Einstein Visiting Fellows
•Vittorio Gallese, Università di Parma
Gallese is considered one of the world’s leading experts in the field of social neuroscience. At the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, a Graduate School of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU) in cooperation with the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Gallese plans to analyse the development of socio-cultural identity.
•Angela M. Gronenborn, University of Pittsburgh
A member of the Leopoldina, Angela Gronenborn numbers among the most internationally renowned structural biologists. Working at the Technische Universität (TU Berlin), she will study the human ribosome and its role in cancer diseases.
•Dimitri Gutas, Yale University
With Dimitri Gutas, the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, a joint effort of the Freie Universität, the Humboldt Universität, and the Zentrum Moderner Orient, will receive the support of a specialist in Graeco-Arabic studies. Gutas will lead a Berlin project of editing, translating, and studying the diffusion and influence of Aristotle’s Poetics in the cultures of all peoples in the West (of India)- Syriac, Arabic, Latin, Hebrew - from antiquity to the Renaissance in a historical process centered on the Arabic translations and commentaries in the world of Islam.
•Yannis G. Kevrekidis, Princeton University
Using computer-assisted methods and machine learning, mathematician Yannis G. Kevrekidis will be working at the FU to develop a new modelling approach for complex systems.
•Neville Morley, University of Bristol
As part of the Topoi Cluster of Excellence, a research association for antiquity studies which involves the FU and HU in cooperation with non-university institutions, a research group working at the Berlin Thucydides Center led by the antiquity scholar Neville Morley will conduct research on the topic of transformation and movement in the political context of ancient Greece in the 5th century B.C. Morley is one of the world’s leading experts on the Greek historian Thucydides.
•Francisco Santos, Universidad de Cantabria, Santander
The former Humboldt research professor Francisco Santos will be in residence at the FU to study lattice polytopes, a category of geometric objects. Santos is one of the most highly regarded scholars in the field of discrete geometry.
•Vasudevan Srinivas, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
Srinivas is a leading mathematician in the field of algebra, K-theory and arithmetical geometry. The world-class international researcher will teach and conduct research at the Berlin Mathematical School, a joint PhD programme offered by the FU, HU and TU Berlin, and contribute to strengthening the school’s international character.
•Susan Merrill Squier, Penn State University
The professor of gender studies and English language and literature is known internationally for her studies at the disciplinary borders of literature, medicine and the history of science. At the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies, a structured doctoral programme at the FU, Susan Merrill Squier will conduct research and offer seminars on the topic of “Graphic Medicine” – comics thematising experiences with illness.
•Douglas W. Stephan, University of Toronto
With his pioneering work on “frustrated Lewis pairs”, as they are known, the chemist created a new field of research and helped shape an entire decade of molecular chemistry. He will establish a research group at the TU Berlin in the field of homogeneous catalysis.
•R. Jay Wallace, University of California, Berkeley
R. Jay Wallace, one of the most renowned contemporary moral philosophers, will be working at the Topoi Cluster of Excellence, studying how social relationships affect moral norms. His research focusses on the interpersonal constitution of moral norms such as promise-based commitments.
Einstein BIH Visiting Fellows
•Rolf Bodmer, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, La Jolla
The biochemist and neurobiologist at the Berlin Institute of Health will carry out research using fruit flies to identify genes that are responsible for hereditary heart disorders.
•Bassem Hassan, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Neuroscientist Bassem Hassan intends to study the extent to which brain development is genetically determined or dependent on other influences. His Berlin-based research group will examine differences in the interconnectivity of neuronal circuits and how this influences behaviour.
•Ulrich Müller, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla
In Berlin, the auditory researcher will examine the sensory mechanisms of hair cells that perform an important function in human hearing and, when defective, can even lead to deafness.
Economist and sociologist Gregory Jackson from the FU will commence a two-year period as an Einstein Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) in 2016. His research project will focus on the relationship between corporate governance – i.e., a company’s regulatory framework – and the development of social inequality. Markus Helfen will take over Gregory Jackson’s professorship at the FU in an interim capacity during this period.
Einstein International Postdoctoral Fellows
•The physicist Zhao Liu will move from Princeton University to the FU and strengthen the ranks of the Emmy Noether Independent Junior Researcher Group led by Emil Bergholtz, which studies the interactions and structures of matter in a quantum state.
•Roarke Horstmeyer from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena will collaborate with Benjamin Judkewitz from the NeuroCure Excellence Cluster to conduct research on the topic of neuroimaging.
•Optimisation problems and their solution in applications like traffic and transport planning are at the heart of Felix Fischer’s work. Fischer will move from the University of Cambridge to the TU Berlin, where he will collaborate with Max Klimm.
Einstein Research Projects
Survivors of sepsis often struggle with cognitive dysfunction. Why that happens and which treatments are available are the subject of the new Einstein Research Project “Mechanisms of Critical Illness-induced Cognitive Dysfunctions” led by Claudia Spies and Ulrich Dirnagl from the Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
•How does infrastructure enable or shape social behaviour? How do strangers meet and interact with each other? How do different forms of knowledge shape institutions or culture? These and several other questions will be addressed in the interdisciplinary Einstein Circle “Large-Scale Organization” organised by sociologist Talja Blokland from the HU Berlin.
•What methods are available for an efficient transformation of solar or electrical energy into fuels, and vice versa? Materials with nanostructures are among the most promising when it comes to significant improvements in energy storage and conversion. Accordingly, these materials are the main focus of the Einstein Circle “Nanostructures for Energy Conversion” led by Junior Research Group leader and former Einstein Junior Fellow Ralph Krähnert from the Department of Chemistry at the TU Berlin.
The conference “The Cultural Legacy of German Colonial Rule”, sponsored by the Einstein Foundation, looks at the social, economic, political and cultural effects of the German colonial past. The event was conceived by Klaus Mühlhahn, Professor of Sinology at the FU Berlin. It is scheduled for April 2016, in collaboration with the German Historical Museum.
The Einstein Foundation Berlin was founded in 2009 by the State of Berlin. The Foundation aims to promote science and research of top international calibre in Berlin and to establish the city as a centre of scientific excellence.
