Over 16,000 individual projectsconducting basic research,backed up by €1.4 billion in

funding were approved by theDeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft(DFG, German Research Founda-tion) in its various programmes andacross the board of scientific disci-plines in 2005. This simply breath-taking number of different researchprojects gives rise to at least as greata variety of research findings, whichare published in innumerable publi-cations and discussed at confer-ences and lectures both nationallyand internationally.

But are important findings able tofind suitable transfer paths intocommercial application and socialuse simply through their publicationand presentation to experts? TheGerman government has announ-ced a significant increase in re-search funding in Germany, so it isperfectly justified that voices arenow calling for the theory that “sci-ence generates economic strength”to be substantiated.

On the one hand this is a chal-lenge faced by the strategicprocesses of those disciplines whichare in a position to contribute to-wards the development of a “re-search economy”. The DFG intendsto initiate and moderate such strate-gic processes within the disciplineseven more in future than it has inthe past.

On the other hand, knowledgetransfer – ideally through humancapital mobility – of findings result-ing from DFG-funded projects con-ducted within companies, partner-ships and associations and publicinstitutions needs to be improvedeffectively. In this respect the hopesand expectations are firmly fixed onthe creative young generation ofscientists. They have the ability totackle fundamental scientific topicsand to work on solutions, either inpartnership with companies or intheir own start-up companies, inorder to take development rightthrough to the prototype stage –which, in the widest sense, may betaken as being the stage where a re-search finding can actually be trans-ferred to a practical application. TheDFG needs to promote these trans-fer processes more vigorously and

should cooperate more with institu-tions such as the “Hightech Grün-derfonds”. The great opportunitiesthat exist can only lead to success,however, if companies choose to ex-ploit these methods of cooperationmore vigorously and actively thanthey have in the past. A new cultureof knowledge transfer, from everydiscipline, both to existing compa-nies and start-ups, is one of the keytopics on which the DFG will focusin future.

As far as I am concerned, how-ever, this in no way means that theDFG needs to abandon its consis-

out of or are affiliated with Collabo-rative Research Centres. Since therecent reform of the CollaborativeResearch Centre programme, an-other 30 Transfer Projects have alsooffered (industrial) partners the op-portunity to cooperate directly inthe work being carried out by a Col-laborative Research Centre. Theseexisting opportunities are not suffi-ciently taken advantage of at pre-sent. Approximately €8.2 millionare currently approved for TransferProjects each year – correspondingto just about 2 percent of the budgetallocated to Collaborative Research

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Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Kleiner

Knowledge Transferthrough Human Capital Mobility

The existing opportunities for exchanging research findings between university research labs

and commercial R&D are in need of a boost

tent bottom-up and broad approachto funding outstanding basic re-search in every discipline. Onething is certain; it will not allow it-self to be guided in its decisions bythe short-term potential to exploitresearch findings. After all, thefunding of applied research is notreally the job of the DFG.

The DFG’s funding mechanismsalready allow for funding of cooper-ation projects between academicand industrial researchers on anequal footing. Prime examples ofthis are the 60 or so Transfer Pro-jects currently underway in 18Transfer Units, which either grow

Centres. Richard Lambert, the for-mer editor of the Financial Times formany years and an expert on inno-vation, wrote a widely acclaimed in-dependent review of business-uni-versity collaboration in the UK com-missioned by the British Govern-ment in 2003. In his report, he cameto the conclusion that “The bestform of knowledge transfer comeswhen a talented researcher movesout of the university and into busi-ness, or vice versa.”

In response to this, the Engineer-ing Sciences Division at the DFGHead Office developed a conceptfor boosting knowledge transfer

Commentary

which aims at the improved use ofexisting opportunities for knowl-edge transfer between universities,businesses, associations and publicinstitutions. The Senate and JointCommittee recently approved thisconcept as a pilot project for a limit-ed period on the recommendation ofthe Executive Committee.

The aim of this pilot stage is tobuild on the results of particularlysuccessful DFG projects which havea high potential for knowledgetransfer. To demonstrate this, suchprojects are requested to submitvery detailed reports of their results.

business, supported by “HightechGründerfonds”, for example, whichis funded by public and private cap-ital, or with private venture-capitalcompanies, by means of funding forjoint research projects (“Start-upProjects”).

Both the leaders of the researchprojects, and especially the re-search scientists conducting the re-search, are entitled to submit briefproposals for additional funding in order to continue the work withthe aim of facilitating knowledgetransfer when the report of the re-sults is submitted. Where the re-

search is to beconducted ispurely up tothe applicants.Thus, if itmakes moresense to per-form the re-search work atthe partner’slabs, then thatis perfectlypossible. Thisfunding mech-anism aims, inparticular, topromote trans-fer throughhuman capitalmobility. It isintended togive an addedboost to knowl-edge transferin every scien-tific disciplineand is there-fore explicitly

not restricted to the engineeringsciences.

In the spirit of the Lambert re-view, this new transfer conceptaims, on the one hand, to enable tal-ented project collaborators to per-form independent research projectsin an appropriate economic and so-cial environment, and, on the otherhand, allow the research findings tobe harmonised with the needs of thecompany or institution. Conversely,the partners with whom the re-searchers are cooperating have theopportunity to become familiar withnew scientific discoveries and canincorporate these findings and any

In addition to the quality of the sci-ence, a convincing demonstration isrequired concerning the potential ofthe findings obtained for further de-velopment in the scientific, econom-ic or social domain. The best reports,from this point of view, can serve asthe basis for continued funding,with two simultaneous goals: either,cooperation with a business, an as-sociation or a public institution – asalready tried and tested by the DFG– with the goal of common researchand implementation of the researchfindings (“Transfer Projects”), or –entirely new for the DFG – coopera-tion with a yet-to-be-established

developments derived from theminto their own plans. In this way,good science performed locally isintended to stimulate a demand formore results. This prevents the clas-sical route of technology transferfrom remaining a one-way street,allowing it to expand to every scien-tific discipline as knowledge trans-fer.

T his is in keeping with the way I see myself as an engineering scientist, because I see three

main areas of responsibility in thefuture. First of all, there is a particu-lar social responsibility of securingand improving peoples’ quality oflife. We are called upon to con-tribute to this by making scientificand technological progress, whichis derived from the insight and newdiscoveries made in basic researchin all research disciplines. Thisleads me to the second area, scien-tific responsibility, which calls forengineering scientists to be person-ally and actively involved in scien-tific discourse and to live up to thesame criteria and benchmarks setby the international scientific com-munity as scientists in any otherdiscipline. In addition to these re-sponsibilities, engineering scien-tists are – thirdly – obliged to bearthe technical and economic respon-sibility for the conversion of re-search findings and innovation intouseful inventions and end productsthat benefit the economy and soci-ety as a whole. If the transferprocesses – from insight to applica-tion – are successful, then new sci-entific questions emerge, thus initi-ating new research. Engineeringscience, just like every other scien-tific discipline, needs to be open tosuch interaction, this give and take,and to expect the same from itspartners.

Professor Matthias Kleiner

Matthias Kleiner is the President of the DFG(since January 2007). 3

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