Press release: High percentage of female professors – life sciences attractive for international visiting fellows

Nr. 97/2012 - 06.06.2012

High percentage of female professors – life sciences attractive for international visiting fellows

(pug) Between 2008 and 2010, the University of Göttingen was recipient of a total of € 168.6 million in grant money from the German Research Foundation (DFG). These figures put the Georgia Augusta at ninth place in the 2012 DFG Funding Atlas published today. The DFG Funding Atlas is the successor to the well-established DFG funding ranking, considered to be the most important ranking list for German universities. Göttingen University had similarly placed ninth in the previous rankings for the years 2005-2007. As compared to this period of time, the university managed to raise the amount of DFG funding by another € 15.1 million. This is equivalent to a ten percent increase. If subsidies from the Excellence Initiative are not taken into account, the sum of DFG funding actually rose by around 14 percent.

The University of Göttingen’s life scientists also boasted high rankings – they were conferred the sixth greatest sum of DFG funding nationwide. DFG funding for veterinary medicine, agricultural sciences and forestry sciences placed the university third on the national level, and fourth for biology. The life sciences in Göttingen are also particularly popular among foreign scientists: The University came in first place for the number of grants for studies abroad funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and second for those from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

The DFG Funding Atlas 2012 also takes gender-specific aspects into consideration for the first time. With a 20.8% proportion of female professors, the Georgia Augusta obtained eighth place in this category. Moreover, this ranking specifically mentions the cooperation between German universities in the natural sciences. The report described “intense extra-regional forms of cooperation” as being particularly characteristic of Göttingen University, thanks to its “central networking”, and it achieved fourth place in the ranking for the number of DAAD-funded study abroad stays for international researchers in the natural sciences.