Excellence Strategy 

CPI's spokespersons are Prof. Dr. Werner Seeger (JLU Giessen) and Prof. Dr. Stefanie Dimmeler (Goethe University Frankfurt).

The cluster project ConTrust: Trust in Conflict – Political Coexistence under Conditions of Uncertainty explores the interplay of trust and mistrust in crisis and conflict situations. 

The project examines how trust can be formed in conflict in four specific areas: democratic and civil society-based forms of trust formation in conflict, economic conflicts, as well as trust in science and media. Within ConTrust, experts from law and economics, sociology, social psychology and political science, philosophy, film and literary studies, and computer science work closely together, transcending disciplinary boundaries, developing new methods and applying these to empirical and normative questions. 

ConTrust's spokespersons are Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Hediger (Goethe University Frankfurt) and Prof. Dr. Nicole Deitelhoff (PRIF Peace Research Institute Frankfurt/Goethe University Frankfurt).

To understand why heavy elements exist in the universe, you have to explore neutron stars, kilonovae and gravitational waves. To that end, the cluster project ELEMENTS brings together particle- and astrophysicists within the framework of the Alliance of Rhine-Main Universities. 

In our universe, incredibly massive and compact objects collide at unimaginable distances, thereby releasing the tiniest particles. The team making up ELEMENTS (Exploring the Universe from Microscopic to Macroscopic Scales) is working on the question of how heavy elements such as copper, gold and lead are created in the process. In so doing, ELEMENTS physicists combine microscopic scales of elementary particles with macroscopic scales of astrophysical objects such as neutron stars. The application as a cluster of excellence was jointly handed in by Goethe University Frankfurt and the Technical University of Darmstadt. 

ELEMENTS' spokespersons are Prof. Dr. Luciano Rezzolla (Goethe University Frankfurt), Prof. Dr. Norbert Pietralla (TU Darmstadt), and Prof. Dr. Tetyana Galatyuk (GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung /TU Darmstadt).

Imbalances in the immune system can result in autoimmune diseases with chronic inflammation. The research network EMTHERA (Emerging therapeutic strategies against infections, inflammation, and immune-mediated diseases) investigates the processes that underlie such systemic diseases at the interface of infection, inflammation, and immunity. 

EMTHERA sets out to understand which mechanisms monitor the balance of cells and organs, how chronic inflammation develops, and how it can be brought under control. The project, as part of which numerous cooperation partners plan to develop new therapeutic strategies, is a joint application with Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz within the framework of the Alliance of Rhine-Main Universities.

EMTHERA's spokespersons are Prof. Dr. Ivan Ðikić (Goethe University Frankfurt) and Prof. Dr. Özlem Türeci (JGU Mainz).

Thanks to modern imaging techniques, cells can now be studied down to the micro level of atoms. The cluster initiative SCALE (SubCellular Architecture of LifE) intends to use this methodology to uncover the principles of how cells organize themselves. 

SCALE scientists are using their expertise in the analysis of RNA and membrane protein complexes to create a simulation of the cell in a high spatial and temporal resolution. In so doing, they are hoping to gain a better understanding of how cells really operate and how their various "machines" work together. Although the functions of many individual molecules have already been the subject of scientific research, it often remains unclear how the architecture inside a cell is formed, how it functions and how the individual elements interact. 

SCALE's spokespersons are Prof. Dr. Martin Beck (Max Planck Institute for Biophysics/Goethe University Frankfurt) as well as Prof. Dr. Inga Hänelt and Prof. Dr. Michaela Müller-McNicoll (both Goethe University Frankfurt).