From HPCwire this week
On 1 January 2009 the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) will launch ten new Collaborative Research Centres. They will be initially funded for the next four years with a total of approximately 90 million euros. Among other things, the new Collaborative Research Centres will study the origins of diseases caused by viruses and bacteria, scarring of the liver and kidneys, and the human skin. Other topics include the optimisation of planning, production and utilisation processes in lightweight engineering and the improvement of communications between humans and technical systems. Four Transregional Collaborative Research Centres are among the ten institutions, distributed among several locations.
The press release includes a paragraph on the mission of each of the centers. One of the very interesting centers planned is the romantically named Centre 71
Collaborative Research Centre/Transregional Collaborative Research Centre 71, “Geometric Partial Differential Equations”, studies a whole series of high-calibre mathematics problems. In it, mathematicians from various disciplines study analytical problems in geometrical contexts, together with mathematical physicists. These can either be based in differential geometry or involve applications requiring geometrical modelling. The geometrical problems originate among others in geometrical measure theory and the calculus of variations. The planned work on the so-called Willmore Functional may prove to be particularly important in this respect. In terms of applications, topics ranging from quantum dynamics to the mathematical principles of solid-state physics will be tackled. The main objective is to study geometrical partial differential equations using analytical and numerical methods and computer-aided simulation, and to describe geometrical and physical phenomena. (Host university: Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg; Spokesperson: Professor Ernst Kuwert; other universities involved: Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen; University of Zurich)
[…] DFG makes 90 million euro investment in research […]