TheHelmholtz Association of German Research Centres (German:Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren) is the largest scientific organisation inGermany. It is a union of 19 scientific-technical and biological-medicalresearch centers (many structured asGmbH private companies). The official mission of the Association is "solving the grand challenges of science, society and industry". Scientists at Helmholtz therefore focus research on complex systems which affect human life and the environment. The namesake of the association is the German physiologist and physicistHermann von Helmholtz.[2]
The annual budget of the Helmholtz Association amounts to €5.8 billion, of which about 70% is raised from public funds. The remaining 30% of the budget is acquired by the 19 individual Helmholtz Centres in the form of contract funding. The public funds are provided by the federal government (90%) and the rest by theStates of Germany (10%).[2][1]
The Helmholtz Association was ranked #6 in 2022 by theNature Index, which measures the largest contributors to papers published in 82 leading journals.[3][4][5]
Helmholtz Institutes are partnerships between a Helmholtz Center and a university (the institutes are not members of the Helmholtz Association themselves). Examples of Helmholtz Institutes include:
Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI), Würzburg, established in 2017[7]
The works of the centers are categorised into programmes, which are divided into six research groups.[8] The Helmholtz centers are grouped according to which research group they belong to:
Earth and environment is studied atAWI,DLR,FZJ,KIT,HZI,GEOMAR,GFZ,HZG,HMGU,UFZ. Topics arethe changing earth,marine, coastal and polar systems,atmosphere andclimate, biogeosystems and the topicterrestrial environment. Helmholtz Earth & Environment unites its research under the program "Changing Earth - Sustaining our Future" and has established the synthesis and communication platform Helmholtz SynCom. SynCom brings together scientific knowledge and connects science, society, and politics to address global environmental challenges.[9]
Eight of the above-mentioned Helmholtz centers are part of theHelmholtz Climate Initiative Regional Climate (in German:Regionale Klimainitiative)REKLIM in order to tackle the interactions betweenatmosphere,sea ice,ocean and land surfaces. These interactions determine theclimate of theEarth. Detailed observations and process studies are combined within the initiative. For the funding period 2009-2013 the REKLIM-initiative has a budget of 32.2 million Euro.[10]In this funding period, the program is divided into seven topics, each of the topics is organized in various work-packages.
Coupled modelling of regional earth systems. Model regions are theArctic andEurope. Highly resolved regional model are used to simulate atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, ice sheets, land surface, soil, vegetation, aerosol chemistry and other components on a regional scale.
Sea-level changes and coastal protection. The effects of glacier and ice-stream dynamics, the response of the ocean on heating and melt water run-off are studied in particularly for Greenland.
Regional climate changes in the Arctic Forcing and long-term effects at the land-ocean interface
The land surface in the climate system
Chemistry-climate interactions on global to regional scales
Extreme weather events Storms, heavy precipitation, floods and droughts
The Helmholtz Association was one of the initial signatories of the 2003Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. This commitment towardsopen access publishing of scientific research was then formally approved by its Assembly of Members, an assembly of the directors of the Helmholtz Centers. In a September 2004 Resolution the Assembly adopted the following commitment: "Publications from the Helmholtz Association shall in future, without exception, be available free of charge, as far as no conflicting agreement with publishers or others exists." While the Helmholtz Association has no strict open access mandate. The Helmholtz Association encouragesgold open access, whilegreen open access is promoted through institutional repositories of the individual Helmholtz Centers.[11] To further the idea of open science, the Helmholtz Association maintains the Helmholtz Open Science Coordination Office.[12]
