Outside the mainstream university budgets, research funding in Saxony-Anhalt is concentrated on priority areas, cooperation networks and location profiles. The universities are encouraged to gear their development concepts in line with this. In this way, scientific excellence can emerge and have a positive impact on the collaboration between science and research groups and the private sector. The identified research priorities have been significantly strengthened and are now both nationally and internationally visible.
These include the neurosciences, immunology, dynamic systems in the life sciences and mathematics, medical technology (including imaging techniques) and e-mobility in Magdeburg, and the life sciences (including medicine, the materials sciences and the humanities) in Halle.
In essence, research excellence is aimed at strengthening and expanding basic research, systematically generating ideas and attracting bright minds. The key point is that definitive new ideas and visions can emerge from the interaction between the results achieved and current trends.
In the Regional Innovation Strategy (RIS), which clarifies the common specific goals and the course of strategic action in the region, the state of Saxony-Anhalt commits itself to market-oriented research and development funding. It concentrates on identified scientific and economic focal points in key markets and boosts activities to attract companies that have their own research capacities. As a result, the RIS covers all the core competencies from science and industry.
Applied research in Saxony-Anhalt focuses in particular on the KAT network (competence network for applied and translational research) of the universities of applied sciences, which have now also been granted their own right to award doctorates in research-intensive areas. Biotechnology (in particular algae and food research), automation and business management, lightweight construction, recycling and waste water, plastics and digitalisation are the focal points of these universities, which are highly regarded both within the scientific community and by cooperating enterprises and project partners.
At the heart of Saxony-Anhalt’s R&I policy is the goal of making the R&D capacity of universities and commercially oriented non-university research institutions even more effective in the long term and intensifying knowledge and technology transfer on a broad front in the interest of sustainable growth. In addition, Saxony-Anhalt undertakes additional measures in terms of science communication to better inform the broader populace about the scientific potential of the state.
The key activities are focused on lead markets that are of significance to the state – energy, mechanical and plant engineering, resource efficiency, health and medicine, mobility and logistics, chemistry and the bioeconomy, and nutrition and agriculture. In turn, these areas clearly have potential for the future and offer exploitable benefits in terms of specialisation.