University of Freiburg Seeks Funding for Four Innovative Clusters of Excellence

The University of Freiburg is putting four applications forward for the final round of the Clusters of Excellence funding line in the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments. The two Cluster of Excellence initiatives Constitution as Practice in Times of Transformation (ConTrans) and Future Forests – Adapting Complex Social-ecological Forest Systems to Global Change each submitted a new full proposal. In addition, the Clusters of Excellence Centre for Integrative Biological Signalling Studies (CIBSS) and Living, Adaptive and Energy-autonomous Materials Systems (livMatS), which have existed since 2019, each submitted a renewal proposal.

ConTrans and Future Forests are responding to the invitation from the German Research Foundation and the German Council of Science and Humanities to submit full proposals by 22 August 2024. The invitation was issued due to the success of the two initiatives in the previous round of the Clusters of Excellence funding line. One hundred and forty-three initiatives from all over Germany applied with outlines for new Clusters of Excellence; forty-one of these were selected for the final round by an international panel of experts.

The full proposals will be reviewed by international experts over the coming months. In May 2025, the Excellence Commission, made up of the members of the expert panel and the federal and state science ministers, will decide which Clusters of Excellence will be funded in the future. Funding will begin on 1 January 2026 and last for seven years.