INTERVIEW

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You have come a long way from university professor to your current position. Was that something you always wanted?It just happened. I didn’t plan to become president of the Humboldt University in Berlin or later the President of the Helmholtz Association. Sometimes things develop. You start doing science, you serve the scientifi c community, you work in committees, and if you do a good job and people trust you, you are among the natural candidates that are asked to take over more responsibility for the system as a whole. My initial goal was to become a professor at a good university that was all.

Do you miss your laboratory?Yes. When I made the switch seven years ago to leave my chair at the University of Konstanz to become president of the Humboldt University, it was clear to me that I was starting a new life. On the other hand, at university it was always great fun to talk to the students on a daily basis. As an experimental physicist you are in close contact with your collaborators and with everybody within the group, and my group was pretty large at the end, 40 to 50 people. Teaching was a lot of fun because each generation was somehow in doubt of what existed and you always had to justify the way you look at things. In that sense, I am really a great admirer of the unity of teaching and research. I got a lot out of teaching for my research and vice versa. And I still have an offi ce nearby in Berlin where parts of my experiments moved to from Konstanz. If I really have the feeling that I need some kind of intellectual refreshment I go there and talk to the students and then I feel better.

Since 2005 you have been the president of the Helmholtz Association. Are you enjoying it so far?It’s an organization diff erent from universities. Up to 2005, I was only working in the university environment. As you know, in Germany half of the research money goes to extra-university research, and the other half is spent in

the universities. Helmholtz especially is one of the main players, not only on a national level but also on the European or international level. And I wanted to know more about this extra-university research. In that sense it was a new experience for me and it is a good experience.

Th e Association is named aft er a famous polymath. In what sense is Hermann von Helmholtz a good role model?Helmholtz was a very interdisciplinary scientist. He started as a physician, was interested in physiology and in the physics of hearing. He invented the eye mirror that allowed doctors to look at the retina and if you look into a textbook of physics, you oft en fi nd these wonderful Helmholtz spherical resonators. But he did a lot of fundamental work in thermodynamics and energy, too. He is somehow considered as the father of the energy conservation law. So, he had a rather broad spectrum of activities. Also,

together with Werner von Siemens he founded our national bureau of standards. Th is was the fi rst big research institute outside of universities. Th ese aspects and his conviction that science has to serve society in the sense that economic growth is based on research and development, is a perfect choice for our association as far as his name is concerned.

How do you straddle the breadth of disciplines covered by only a small number of institutes?We are fi rst of all a big organization, 26,000 people, and a budget of 2.3 billion euros. We are not doing everything. Instead we try to focus on the grand challenges that are important for the future of mankind, which means energy, earth and environment, health, space and transportation, structure of matter and key technologies. Th ey might seem disjointed at fi rst sight, but there are a lot of collaborations and cross-interactions. Take, for example, the earth observation system that has been set up. Th ere you have contributions from centres that are in geosciences, that are in ocean and polar science, but of course too from our aeronautics centre, because the monitoring of the earth and its environment takes place more and more from space. Th at’s one example. Another example is particle therapy for cancer. We have the GSI in Darmstadt, where they study nuclear physics with heavy ions; it’s a big accelerator. Out of this accelerator work particle therapy for tumour treatment with carbon ions was developed. And right now, in collaboration with Siemens, these big machines are being commercialized. So in that sense you have cross-fertilization among very diff erent research areas.

You also switched from an institute-based funding to a project-based funding…Right, fi ve years ago there was a reform of the Helmholtz Association in the sense that the fi nancing that was so far centre-based is now based on programmes, which are evaluated by international peers, and fi nancing of the programmes depends on

Jürgen Mlynek, President of the Helmholtz Association.

Big answers to big challengesThe Helmholtz Association is Germany’s largest research institution and a major player in international science. Nature Materials talked to its president, Jürgen Mlynek, to learn more about the strategy and aims of the association.

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INTERVIEW

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the recommendation of the evaluation committees. Th is means that there is more competition among the centres, but also more transparency. Th at certainly has helped the Helmholtz Association to develop more momentum towards its future.

Is it an advantage to have such big research centres at your disposal, compared with smaller units?I think our approach ‘think big, act big’ is helpful in a sense. However, we have a certain ‘branding’ problem. Unfortunately, not many people know about the Helmholtz Association. Th ey know about some of its centres like the DESY in Hamburg, or the Research Centres in Jülich and Karlsruhe. But people don’t know that they all belong to the Helmholtz Association. Th is is also true for people from companies. But once companies realize our potential and the breadth of activities, they get immediately interested because it’s a big opportunity to cooperate with Helmholtz for example in the energy fi eld or the health sector.

With such strong centres, how big is your infl uence as President?There is a supervising board, the so-called Helmholtz Senate, which I am chairing. The Helmholtz Senate, in the end, decides on the budgeting of the programmes and the overall strategy of the Helmholtz Association. In that sense, I think the president has an influence on the main decisions within the Association. One nevertheless clearly has to see that the centres themselves are independent legal units. This is due to the fact that the centres are financed 90% by the federal government and 10% by the federal states. Each centre is a legally independent unit with its own board of trustees, where the federal government and the corresponding federal state are also represented. In that sense the government structure of Helmholtz is a little bit complicated and not as streamlined as the Max Planck Society or the Fraunhofer Society.

You also have an incentive fund of 25 million euros.Right, there is a strategy fund of the president. So far it has been 25 million euros annually; it will go up to 58 million in 2008. Th is was something I succeeded in establishing within my fi rst year as president. I had the feeling that as well as these programmes that run for fi ve years and are then re-evaluated, you need additional fl exibility in setting up new activities especially across the boundaries

of the research areas and in cooperation with other partners in the German research system, mainly the universities.

Do you see the Association well positioned within a European or global context?I think so. We play our role in the national system. In a sense, we are the national labs of Germany. We play I think an important role at the European level. If you look at the European ESFRI roadmap for research infrastructure, there are 35 large-scale facilities mentioned. In 50% of them Helmholtz is involved in some way or other and in many of the top activities mentioned we are the leading partner. Just to give you two examples: at the moment we are planning an X-ray free-electron laser in Hamburg — the XFEL — and the facility for antiproton and ion research in Darmstadt for studies in nuclear physics — the FAIR. Both are activities that cost roughly 1 billion euros each. Germany takes over the major costs. But these are European if not international projects where also our partners will contribute fi nancially. It is clear the big machines such as an X-ray free-electron laser, the large hadron collider or the fusion reactor ITER can only be realized by an international collaboration in an international consortium. You need to have competence in these fi elds so that each of the leading countries in science and technology can take over their share if a new large-scale facility is set up. In that sense, we also act globally.

In the US, the national labs are administrated by universities or companies. What is the advantage of having an independent institution?Th ere are diff erent governance models possible. Th e US model is the one where the national labs are government owned but company operated. Oft en the operation is by universities, but private universities or at least universities that have a very pronounced entrepreneurial spirit. I cannot imagine in Germany a direct analogue to this model because universities in Germany have a very diffi cult governing structure. And as a former president of a German university, I know what I am talking about. Th e governing structure within German universities is still more or less characterized by collective irresponsibility. So that model wouldn’t work in Germany. What we need though also in Germany in, let’s say the universities but also in the research institutes, is more freedom to act, more entrepreneurial freedom in the sense that we have more fl exibility, less bureaucracy, less micromanagement from the administration of the ministries and so forth.

You also supported the drive to create German elite universities…Yes. I think with the elite universities a new momentum was created in the German science landscape in the sense that the universities really have to think about concepts of the future. They have to think about gaining profile by setting up research clusters, and they have to deal with the issue of talent management with respect to PhD students. Here, graduate schools become more and more important also for the universities, especially if they want to attract PhD students at the international level. You need structures where you have some kind of research environment of certified quality with a clear time horizon. This has been missing so far, and all these issues are on the table now. We need top institutions like lighthouses that everybody knows all over the world when it comes to universities.

Th e Helmholtz Association also goes into universities to support new talent.We have the universities as our main cooperation partners for two reasons. One is the principle of affi nity and proximity — we try to set up joint research centres with the universities. Th e other contact point with universities are the young people. We have 3,400 PhD students within the Helmholtz Association. PhD students are the backbone of research and we have to be attractive for PhD students but also for young postdocs. Th is means that we have to off er them unique working conditions and also perspectives for their own career development. Th at is why we are so into these junior research groups. What I would love to see is that as a kind of regular case these young people are appointed simultaneously as junior professors by universities so that they can profi t from the research environment within the Helmholtz centres but also gain some teaching experience at the universities.

Do you sometimes dream of personally taking part in some of the exciting projects within the Association, such as polar exploration or a trip into space?I am looking forward to going to the Antarctic when the Neumayer station III will be inaugurated next year. Th is is a trip I would defi nitely do. A space mission would be interesting too, I never thought about it. At the moment I still have to keep my feet on the ground to do my job here at Helmholtz.

Interview by Joerg Heber.

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