FH-Impuls status meeting in Göttingen - report from the intensification phase : Date:
On 12 June 2024, the ten FH-Impuls partnerships met to share their experiences at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hildesheim/Holzminden/Göttingen (HAWK) to report on the current status of their activities, successes, hurdles and future prospects and to exchange ideas.
At the invitation of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the hosting FH-Impuls partnership "Plasma for Life", around 40 representatives of the FH-Impuls community met at the Göttingen Health Campus. In the morning, they presented their past activities and successes as well as an outlook on the remaining project duration in 10 compact and exciting impulses. The formats and structures presented were as diverse as the partnerships themselves. With great motivation and commitment, the speakers presented impressive figures on initiated industrial collaborations, published papers, initiated theses and established research structures. In the afternoon, the participants discussed questions on successes, lessons learnt, highlights, perspectives, communication and networking in two working groups. Members of the university management and partnership spokespersons met in one working group, while members of the cluster management and academic staff met in the other. The participants exchanged experiences and identified new points of contact. After several hours of intensive discussion, open questions and as yet unresolved challenges in the long-term anchoring of the processes and structures initiated as part of FH-Impuls were addressed in the joint final presentation.
Funding guideline as a successful catalyst for sustainable structures at HAW
To summarise the event, it can be said that the FH-Impuls programme, which is set to run for nine years with a total of around 10 million euros per partnership, has had an enormous leverage effect for the 12 participating universities. Not only have the profiles of the universities been sharpened and their research expertise expanded, but their visibility has also been significantly increased beyond the region. This has immensely increased both the chances of participating in other funding programmes and the initiation of new research and practical collaborations. Many thanks went to the BMBF for this special funding format, which is unanimously recognised as extremely valuable and unique to date due to its long-term nature. It was also emphasised by everyone that the resources in the management projects were and are an important key to success. The greatest challenge for most universities is now to stabilise the established structures and to strategically anchor and further develop the FH-Impuls research activities in the university structures.