Business meets top research: The Mayor and his Economic Advisory Council visit BIOSS

Connecting business and academics was the goal of the Economic Advisory Council’s meeting called by the Mayor of Freiburg, Dr Dieter Salomon, on the 21st of October. The Spokesperson of BIOSS - Centre for Biological Signalling Studies, Prof Dr Michael Reth, spoke to roughly 60 representatives from Freiburg’s commerce and industry about his new centre. With not a little wit and charm, he demonstrated that basic medical and biological research can be exciting, even for non-experts. After the meeting, the representatives from the University of Freiburg had the opportunity to talk with representatives from commerce and promoters of trade and industry over a glass of wine.

In his welcoming speech, the Mayor of Freiburg, Dr Salomon, emphasized the importance of science for Freiburg’s economy. He encouraged the University of Freiburg to reach out more to the public with its successes and research findings. “The excellence of the University of Freiburg, especially in the life sciences, must be made more well-known in Freiburg, Stuttgart (the capital of Baden-Württemberg) and beyond,” he said.

Bernd Dallmann, the Director of FWTM (Freiburg’s commerce, tourism and trade fair bureau), announced another success for Freiburg’s health economy. FWTM has successfully completed the second round of Baden-Württemberg’s cluster competition with its leading project Healthcare & Economy, which met with the approval of the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ jury of experts. The goal behind the cluster is to increase the interconnectedness and internationalization of companies and research institutions in the region's health economy. “This is another stepping stone for the development and the awareness of the Freiburg Health Region’s excellence on the national and international scale,” Mr Dallmann said.

Prof Dr Reth stressed that BIOSS’s signalling research programme has clearly benefited from the thorough research in Freiburg of all the model organisms which are important for signalling. This research provides an excellent foundation for BIOSS’s interdisciplinary research of different species.