Gene centers sweep prizes in German Bioregio competition

2019

support internationalisation primarily as a means to research excellence or knowledge access, others consider it an avenue towards competitiveness or for science diplomacy reasons. On occasions, both perspectives are combined in one instrument. Even when research funders are independent from research policy and follow a narrow mandate to support the best science, like in the case of FWF, they have to decide on the ways in which international cooperation is supported: explicitly/implicitly, thematically bottom-up/top-down, with whom, in what geographic areas, etc. This is all the more important if the funding agency has a high systemic relevance, like in the case of FWF in Austria. In the period of the study (project funding decisions between 2003-2015), FWF supported international cooperation through a portfolio of instruments, including: • support for research projects (i.e. including personnel costs) in bilateral and multilateral schemes: bilateral joint programmes, bilateral and multilateral lead agency 1 programmes, multilateral ERA-Net programmes, multilateral Eurocores programmes, and; • networking support in bilateral and multilateral settings. In addition, there is the possibility of including international cooperation in FWF's regular stand-alone research projects. FWF's dedicated mobility programmes (Schrödinger and Meitner scholarships) were not part of the current analysis. Between 2003 and 2015, FWF invested slightly over € 134m in its international programmes (14% of its overall budget in the most recent years). This makes it the most significant funder of international research cooperation in Austria, and the only one with funds for thematically open international research projects. The largest share of this sum was invested through Lead Agency procedures (€ 65.70m, 49.8%; 9 programmes). € 32.96m were invested in ERA-Nets (21 ERA-Nets, 52 Calls), € 18.92m in bilateral non-lead agency joint programmes (11 programmes) and € 16.68 m went into EUROCORES Calls (29 Calls). An overview on the project structure and their start dates can be viewed in Figure 1. 1 Under the lead agency process, a joint application by researchers from several countries is submitted to just one funding organisation. The submission process is governed by the provisions in force at the relevant organisation and the other countries' agencies involved accept the funding decision of the lead agency.

ISSUE 47 | MAY of Education and Research, Germany], Mireille Matt [INRA], Goran Marklund [Vinnova] and Matthias Weber [AIT], as well as in dedicated sessions (e.g. sessions on 'Policy designs for impact generation', 'Pathways to impact of R&I Policies'), workshops (e.g. on 'The new mission orientation' and on 'The assessment of societal impact of R&I policy') and plenary debates (e.g. Plenary 1 on 'Designing and supporting mission oriented research policy'). In addition, at several points of the conference, the audience was encouraged by the moderator to participate in the live survey via the mentioned tool mentimeter. This survey also covered some general questions concerning impact assessments more broadly. The use of the mentimeter tool was regarded as suitable means to elicit some first views on a concept that has only recently re-emerged in policy debates, and on which there are currently no systematic studies available on the expectations that different stakeholder groups attach to it. 296 experts from 39 countries and all continents had registered for the conference. Of these, 255 actually attended the conference. 41.9% of the accredited participants came from Austria. Larger contingents came from the category 'international institutions' (8.1%), especially from the European Commission, but also from the OECD, EUREKA and COST, which made the European dimension of the event visible. 7.1% of the accredited persons came from Germany; 5.7% from the UK; 3.4% each from France and Norway; 3% each from Belgium and Spain and 2.7% from the Netherlands. With the exception of Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia, all EU countries were represented. Other accredited persons from non-EU countries came from Iceland,

2005

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2023

This report was commissioned by the Austrian Science Fund's (FWF) and presents the results of an accompanying evaluation of the selection process for the first call of FWF's Cluster of Excellence (CoE) programme. The purpose is to provide information for developing the procedures for the next call for proposals.

2015

With its Leading-Edge Cluster Competition (in German: Spitzencluster-Wettbewerb; LECC), the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) is supporting innovation clusters in a nationwide contest for the first time. In three rounds, 15 cluster initiatives were selected and provided with funds to support them on their way to becoming international leaders in their field of technology, or, if they already held such a position, to maintain or expand their lead. Through a sustainable mobilisation of regional economic potentials, supporting the strategic development of Leading-Edge Clusters has the goal of increasing growth, securing or creating jobs and enhancing the attractiveness of Germany as a location for innovation and business. The BMBF contracted a project consortium to conduct an accompanying evaluation of the LECC. This consortium consisted of RWI, Essen (project coordination); the Institut fur Sozialforschung und Gesellschaftsp...

Journal of Public Health, 2011

Aim The Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development (FP) are the European Union's funding programmes for research in Europe. The study analyses the features of external experts involved in evaluating the research proposals in FP6 (years 2003FP6 (years -2006 in the area of Life Sciences. Subjects and methods Experts were analysed with respect to nationality, gender, organisational affiliation and rotation. The correlations between the number of experts by nationality and scientific research indicators were also explored. Result Experts from 70 countries participated, with 70% coming from 10 countries. The gender composition was relatively stable, with approximately 30% of female experts. The majority of experts came from higher education establishments (51%) and 12% from industry. About 40% of experts participated in the evaluation process two or more times. The number of experts by nationality was linearly correlated with gross national income (r=0.95, p<0.0001), population (r= 0.91, p<0.0001), and number of research publications in health sciences (r=0.93, p<0.0001). However, using multiple linear regression analysis, only gross national income had partial regression coefficients significantly different from zero (p=0.017). The observed value of experts for Italy and Belgium (155) were higher than predicted by this regression model (231 and 71 respectively). Conclusion The expert panels involved were balanced with respect to nationalities, whereas the gender distribution was lower than the target. There was a satisfactory degree of rotation of experts between evaluation rounds. The percentage of experts from industry was lower than expected. a The experts from other nationalities were from: Latvia (8); Croatia, India, Turkey (7); British Indian Ocean Territory, China (6);

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2011

In this paper, we evaluate the R&D enhancing effects of two large public grant schemes aiming at encouraging the performance of firms organized in clusters. These are Germany's well known BioRegio and BioProfile contests for which we compare the research performance of winning regions in contrast with non-winning and non-participating comparison regions. We apply Difference-inDifference estimation techniques in a generalized linear model framework, which allows to control for different initial regional conditions in the biotechnology related R&D activity. Our econometric findings support the view that winners generally outperform non-winning participants during the treatment period, thus indicating that exclusive funding as well as the stimulating effect of being a "winner" seems to work in the short-term. In contrast, no indirect impacts stemming from a potential mobilizing effect of the contest approaches have been detected. Also, we find only limited evidence for long-term effects of public R&D grants in the post-treatment period. The results of our analysis remain stable if we additionally augment the model to account for the particular role of spatial dependence in the R&D outcome variables.

Family Practice, 2012

Human Gene Therapy, 2021

Gene therapies have been successfully applied to treat severe inherited and acquired disorders. Although research and development are sufficiently well funded in Germany and while the output of scientific publications and patents is comparable with the leading nations in gene therapy, the country lags noticeably behind with regard to the number of both clinical studies and commercialized gene therapy products. In this article, we give a historical perspective on the development of gene therapy in Germany, analyze the current situation from the standpoint of the German Society for Gene Therapy (DG-GT), and define recommendations for action that would enable our country to generate biomedical and economic advantages from innovations in this sector, instead of merely importing advanced therapy medicinal products. Inter alia, we propose (1) to harmonize and simplify regulatory licensing processes to enable faster access to advanced therapies, and (2) to establish novel coordination, support and funding structures that facilitate networking of the key players. Such a center would provide the necessary infrastructure and know-how to translate cell and gene therapies to patients on the one hand, and pave the way for commercialization of these promising and innovative technologies on the other. Hence, these courses of action would not only benefit the German biotech and pharma landscape but also the society and the patients in need of new treatment options.