Organisational details
The Helmholtz Association brings together 18 scientific-technical and biological-medical research centres throughout Germany. The Helmholtz’s six research fields focus on the grand and pressing challenges facing our society:
- Energy
- Earth and environment
- Health
- Aeronautics, space and transport
- Matter
- Information
The Helmholtz’s research institutions set up and operate unique research infrastructures and large-scale facilities such as particle accelerators, research vessels and earth observation satellites. They exemplify the division of tasks in the German research landscape and cooperation with German and foreign universities and research institutions: almost 13,000 external scientists and staff from more than 130 nations work at Helmholtz’s research facilities every year.
The Helmholtz Association has several instruments to enable Helmholtz Centres to achieve their goals, e.g.:
- Programme-oriented funding: Helmholtz invests its resources not in individual institutions, but in cross-centre research programmes. Their objective is to deliver an integrated response to complex issues emanating from academia, society, and the economy, and to work with the best partners to develop system solutions.
- Helmholtz develops and operates complex future-oriented infrastructures and unique large-scale facilities such as accelerator systems, research vessels, observatories and supercomputers and makes them available to researchers from around the world.
- The Helmholtz Initiative and Networking Fund makes it possible to set up initiatives rapidly and flexibly in areas where strategic goals are to be reached quickly.
