The Human Brain Project (HBP) is developing a shared European research infrastructure with the aim of examining the organization of the brain using detailed analyses and simulations and thus combating neurological and psychiatric disorders.
On April the 5th, Prof. Johanna Wanka, Federal Minister of Education and Research, announced funding for four Copernicus projects for the transformation of the energy sector. The Power-To-X project coordinated by RWTH Aachen University, Forschungszentrum Jülich, and DECHEMA was among those selected.
Energy storage systems are indispensable for a reliable, economical and environmentally friendly energy supply. However the expansion of the only well-known short- and medium-term storage technology, pumped storage plants (PSW), is limited.
Professor Heinz Pitsch, director of the Institute for Combustion Technology at RWTH, Professor Hermann Ney, head of the Chair of Computer Science 6, and Professors Martin Möller and Matthias Wesseling, scientific director and vice scientific director respectively at DWI – Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials are each receiving an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council, ERC. Professor Barbara Terhal from the Theoretical Physics Teaching and Research Area is receiving a Consolidator Grant. Additionally, RWTH, represented by Professor Jörg Pretz from the Chair of Experimental Physics III B, is involved as a research institution in the ERC Advanced Grant of Professor Hans Ströher, director of the Jülich Institute for Nuclear Physics.
On 1 April, the SuperC building of RWTH Aachen University hosted an event for the Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA). The new JARA institutes, in which scientists from Aachen and Jülich will work on pressing issues of our time, were presented to an audience of about 90. At the same time, the directors of the collegially managed institutes were appointed JARA professors. Excellent early-career scientists were also honoured by JARA prizes for young researchers: JARA Best Master and JARA Excellent Junior.