Research in Germany

Germany is a top destination for PhD students, postdocs, and senior scientists. The website "Research in Germany" helps you to find your way to Germany, to seek for PhD positions, research jobs or funding opportunities. It describes the German research landscape and helps you plan your career and life in Germany. Welcome to Germany - the Land of Ideas!

Two female researchers are standing in a large solar centre at the DLR Jülich.

Why Germany

There are many good reasons for doing research in Germany. It is one of the most innovative, stable and well endowed research nations and its universities and research institutions are among the best in the world. Values like freedom and diversity as well as social and ecological responsibility are considered important to ensure knowledge gain and societal progress.

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Here you will find a selection of the latest R&D news from German universities, non-university research institutes and industrial research facilities.

“Tree of Life” for Flowering Plants

With their own botanical collection material and their research knowledge on the evolution of cruciferous plants, i.e. plants of the cabbage family, bioscientists at Heidelberg University have contributed to a large-scale international study that has produced a comprehensive “tree of life” for flowering plants. For this purpose, researchers worldwide analysed the genetic information of more than 9,500 species from almost 8,000 genera. The Heidelberg scientists from the Centre for Organismal Studies were able to use comprehensive research material from living collections, seed collection and the herbarium.

Apr 24, 2024, 7:36:53 PM

Visual summary of compressed sensing of field-resolved molecular fingerprints. Reprint from DOI: 10.34133/ultrafastscience.

Molecular Fingerprint Beyond the Nyquist Frequency

Ultrafast laser spectroscopy allows the ascertainment of dynamics over extremely short time scales, making it a very useful tool in many scientific and industrial applications. A major disadvantage is the considerable measuring time this technique usually requires, which often leads to lengthy acquisition times spanning minutes to hours. Researchers have developed a technique to speed up spectroscopic analysis. The results of the project led by Hanieh Fattahi, Research group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute of the Science of Light, in collaboration with industrial partners from Germany and France, were recently published in the Journal of Ultrafast Science.

Apr 24, 2024, 7:09:20 PM

The Yellow-bellied flycatcher (Empidonax flaviventris) is a small insectivore of the tyrant flycatcher family that cannot produce the protein cryptochrome 4. The birds breed in North America and migrate to southern Mexico and Central America in winter.

How evolution has optimised the magnetic sensor in birds

The magnetic sense of migratory birds is probably based on the protein cryptochrome 4, and a genetic study has now provided further support for this theory. A team of researchers from the University of Oldenburg and the Institute of Avian Research in Wilhelmshaven compared the genomes of several hundred bird species and found that the gene sequence for cryptochrome 4 has changed considerably during evolution. This suggests that cryptochrome 4 was selected to adapt to different environmental conditions. A possible explanation is that cryptochrome 4 acts as a sensor protein. The study was published in the journal Proceedings B of the Royal Society.

Apr 24, 2024, 7:08:19 PM

Schematic of the valley polarization effect, where the incident trefoil field (in purple) causes valley polarization in the bulk material MoS2. This effect can be controlled by rotating the field with respect to the material.

A novel universal light-based technique to control valley polarization in bulk materials

An international team of researchers reports in Nature a new method that achieves valley polarization in centrosymmetric bulk materials in a non-material-specific way for the first time. This “universal technique” may have major applications linked to the control and analysis of different properties for 2D and 3D materials, which can in turn enable the advancement of cutting-edge fields such us information processing and quantum computing. The project was realised in collaboration between ICFO - The Institute of Photonic Sciences, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, the Max-Born-Institute and the Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid.

Apr 24, 2024, 7:01:34 PM

Narcissistic CEOs Appoint Other Narcissists to the Management Board

Birds of a feather flock together, as the popular saying goes. It seems that this also applies to narcissistic managers, as a research team led by Professor Lorenz Graf-Vlachy from TU Dortmund University has discovered: Narcissistic CEOs are inclined to appoint other narcissists to the management board. For the analysis, the researchers from TU Dortmund University and FAU in Erlangen/Nuremberg examined thousands of LinkedIn profiles of US top managers. The study was recently published in the prestigious Journal of Management.

Apr 24, 2024, 2:18:26 PM

Each green fluorescent spot represents a leaf cell in which a large gene segment was successfully inserted into the plant's geDifferent variants of Cas9 were used: an inactiv Cas9 (left), an active Cas9 (center) and Cas9 fused with an exonuclease (right)

CRISPR/Cas breakthrough: Enhanced “genetic scissors” enable stable insertion of large genes

Major progress on the CRISPR front. Scientists at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB) have succeeded for the first time in stably and precisely inserting large gene segments into the DNA of higher plants very efficiently. To do this, they optimized the gene-editing method CRISPR/Cas, commonly known as “genetic scissors”. The improved CRISPR method offers great opportunities for the targeted modification of genes in higher plants, both for breeding and research. The study led by Prof. Alain Tissier and Dr. Tom Schreiber was published in the renowned journal Molecular Plant.

Apr 24, 2024, 1:49:44 PM