Press releases

FRANKFURT. As of 22 October, Goethe University is part of the National High-Performance Computing Alliance. The “Joint Science Conference" (GWK) announced its decision today in Bonn. The “NHC South-West Alliance" has been approved and will receive € 124 million over a period of ten years (€ 40 million of which will come from Joint Science Conference funds). The alliance covers three federal states, Hessen, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, with facilities in Frankfurt (Goethe University), Mainz (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JMU)), Kaiserslautern (Technical University of Kaiserslautern) and Saarbrücken (Saarland University). € 45 million are earmarked for the future development of high-performance computing at Goethe University, whose own contribution is € 30 million.

With this decision, the Joint Science Conference is also underlining Goethe University's excellent performance in the area of green IT, for which the Frankfurt team led by Professor Volker Lindenstruth is responsible. Coming in 1st, 2nd and 8th place, supercomputers designed by Lindenstruth have achieved exceptionally good rankings in recent years in the biannual “Green 500" world rankings, on a global scale too. With the grant from the Joint Science Conference, Hessen now has two National High-Performance Computing (NHC) centres.

Professor Enrico Schleiff, President of Goethe University, expressed his delight at the positive decision announced by the Joint Science Conference of the national and regional governments: “This is tremendous acknowledgement of the great and continuous efforts we've been making for over ten years in the development and realisation of energy-saving supercomputers. I thank Volker Lindenstruth's team for their persevering work on the further development of this trailblazing technology, which is meanwhile also a bestseller and in demand worldwide. I would also like to thank our Minister of Science, Angela Dorn, for giving our application her sustained support. With the appointment of further outstanding professors in this field, we will further strengthen this research priority in the coming years and, together with our partners in Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, set important new trends in the further technological development of energy-saving computing systems."

Angela Dorn, Hessian Minister of Science, commended the role of Goethe University in the new alliance: “An alliance makes us stronger because the universities each contribute their own strengths. Professor Volker Lindenstruth and his team at Goethe University have, for example, developed technologies for energy-saving high-performance computers, and the Hessian Ministry of Higher Education, Research, Science and the Arts (HMWK) has supported this development on a large scale for over 10 years as part of the LOEWE Initiative. I'm pleased and proud that this support has yielded such a sustainable return – above all also for the protection of our environment and the reduction of CO2 emissions. Many a data centre today could heat a small town with its waste heat. In the fight against catastrophic climate change, we must make use of every opportunity to reduce energy consumption – and green IT makes an important contribution here, also in the area of high-performance computing."

Professor Volker Lindenstruth, Professor for High-Performance Computing Architecture at Goethe University and Chairman of the Board of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS), sees Goethe University's inclusion in the National High-Performance Computing Alliance as an important milestone for further research in Frankfurt in the area of green IT: “As part of the National High-Performance Computing Alliance, it's now even more possible to use the fruits of our research for the benefit of the general public and for more intensive research work. For example, we've accomplished remarkable progress at Goethe University over the last ten years as far as increasing the efficiency of scientific software is concerned. As a result, the same scientific results can be produced with much less energy consumption. Hundredfold increases in computing speed have been achieved for many applications, making even very complex problems calculable for the first time ever. For example, the highly efficient algorithms developed at Goethe University were and are used both in particle physics at CERN as well as at FAIR at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research."

In addition to the four new centres mentioned above, to date there are also NHC centres in Aachen, Berlin, Dresden, Erlangen-Nuremberg, Göttingen, Karlsruhe, Paderborn and Darmstadt, meaning that from now on all three locations of the alliance of Rhine-Main Universities (RMU) are also part of the alliance.

Background:

High-performance supercomputers are becoming increasingly important in science and research. In view of increasingly complex and large volumes of data, researchers in the widest variety of disciplines are more dependent than ever on high-performance computers. Today, more and more research questions, for example in medicine, physics or chemistry, can only be answered by means of large-scale computing capacities and intelligent applications. That is the reason behind the decision by Germany's national and regional governments in 2018 to establish a nationwide National High-Performance Computing Alliance (NHC) in order to bundle and further develop the existing strengths of high-performance computing centres within a national network. The establishment of a coordinated alliance is a response to the growing demand for high-performance computing by enabling researchers at universities to access the computing capacity they need for their research across Germany and in line with their needs, regardless of their respective locations. Through the National High-Performance Computing Alliance, the technical and methodological strengths of high-performance computing centres will also be further upgraded and better aligned. At the same time, the aim is to introduce a greater number of researchers to high-performance computing through training and continuing education at the nine NHC centres, to enhance the skills of high-performance computing system users and to foster young talent in order to fully utilise the potential of high-performance computers and to strengthen Germany as a location for research and innovation. A total of € 625 million is earmarked for the National High-Performance Computing Alliance over the ten-year funding period.

Editor: Dr. Olaf Kaltenborn, PR & Communication Department, Tel: +49 (0) 69 798-13035, Fax: +49 (0) 69 798-763 12531, kaltenborn@pvw.uni-frankfurt.de

FRANKFURT. In the winter semester of 2021/22, Flurina Schneider, scientific director of ISOE – Institute for Social-Ecological Research, will take up her professorship for Social Ecology and Transdisciplinarity at Goethe University Frankfurt. The joint professorship of the independent research institute ISOE and the university is the first with this particular focus in Germany. The inaugural lecture “Research for sustainable development – from knowledge processes and options for action" will take place on October 20, 2021 on the Riedberg campus.

Social ecology is still a comparatively young scientific field that has proven central to environmental and sustainability research in recent decades and is now for the first time entering university teaching with a professorship. Social ecology examines the relationships between society and nature and poses the question of how these relationships can be made more sustainable. Particular importance is attached to the role of knowledge processes. “In the search for science-based solutions to challenges such as climate change or biodiversity loss, social ecology, with its transdisciplinary approach, facilitates joint learning processes between science and society. That is why it plays a key role in sustainability research", says Flurina Schneider, who will give her inaugural lecture at Goethe University Frankfurt on October 20, 2021.

Cooperation between ISOE and Goethe University in research, teaching and transfer
In Germany, social ecology was mainly developed by ISOE, which developed this transdisciplinary field of science in terms of their research program. “I am very pleased to take up the first professorship in this important field of science in Germany at Goethe University Frankfurt," says ISOE's scientific director Flurina Schneider. With the joint professorship in Social Ecology and Transdisciplinarity, which was created on the initiative of the independent research institute in Frankfurt and which is part of the Faculty of Biological Sciences, ISOE is intensifying its long-standing cooperation with Goethe University in research, teaching and transfer. Since 2008, ISOE's scientists have been teaching theoretical concepts, methods, and empirical applications of social-ecological research as part of the environmental master's program at Goethe University. 

Anchoring the educational mandate for sustainable development in academic teaching
With the professorship, ISOE and Goethe University are also responding to the growing demand in the field of sustainability research and related research methods. “As a university, we take the mandate to anchor education for sustainable development in our courses of study very seriously," says Enrico Schleiff, president of Goethe University Frankfurt. “We are therefore extremely pleased to have Flurina Schneider, an internationally renowned expert in Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research, as a professor for this chair, which is unique in Germany. Her expertise in scientific principles and methods with respect to socio-ecological transformation processes and sustainable development is not only a great asset for our range of courses, but also for the university as a whole: sustainability as the preservation of natural life-support systems and climate protection is a matter close to our hearts in research, teaching and administration."

A professor with wide-ranging expertise in environmental and sustainability research 
The Swiss sustainability researcher Flurina Schneider has been scientific director of ISOE since April 1, 2021. She is the successor of Thomas Jahn, who co-founded ISOE in 1989. Schneider completed her habilitation in 2016 on the topic of transdisciplinary and transformative research for sustainable governance of natural resources with a view to intra- and intergenerational justice at the University of Bern, where she had been employed as a researcher and head of the Land Resources Research Cluster since 2010. Her scientific activities span broad areas of environmental and sustainability research: from soil-conserving farming systems and quality assurance of eco-products to equity in land and water governance and research projects explicitly addressing the role of transdisciplinary knowledge production in sustainability transformations.

The importance of knowledge in sustainability processes
The role of knowledge in sustainability transformations is Flurina Schneider's key research and teaching priority. She will address this topic also in her inaugural lecture. “It is crucial to understand the mechanisms by which scientific knowledge translates into societal action and what types of knowledges are needed for social-ecological transformations to actually succeed," says Schneider. She will also focus on issues of environmental justice between the generations, as well as between countries in the global North and South. “I'm really looking forward to giving students access to all the complex issues and challenges of sustainability research."

Inaugural lecture of Prof. Dr. Flurina Schneider 
“Research for sustainable development – from knowledge processes and options for action"
Date: October 20, 2021, time: start at 1 pm, location: Lecture Hall 2 of the Otto Stern Center on the Riedberg Campus of Goethe University Frankfurt.

Scientific contact:
Prof. Dr. Flurina Schneider
Tel. +49 69 7076919-0
flurina.schneider(at)isoe.de  

Press contact:
Melanie Neugart
Tel. +49 69 7076919-51
neugart(at)isoe.de 

Chemists at Goethe University Frankfurt have developed two new classes of materials in the field of nanomaterials and investigated them together with their cooperation partners at the University of Bonn: for the first time, they have succeeded in producing a nano sphere of silicon atoms and a building block for a diamond-like crystal of the semiconductor elements silicon and germanium. The two new classes of materials have potential applications in the miniaturisation of computer chips, in high-resolution screens for smartphones, and in solar cells and light-emitting diodes with the highest levels of efficiency. 

FRANKFURT. The latest generations of computer chips are only a few nanometres in size and are becoming ever more energy-saving and powerful as a result of progressive miniaturisation. Since the etching processes traditionally used in chip production are increasingly reaching their limits, the development of new, nanostructured semiconductor materials is essential. Such nano semiconductors also play a central role in converting electricity into light and vice versa. 

A team at Goethe University Frankfurt led by Matthias Wagner has now succeeded in synthesising molecular nano "spheres" made of 20 silicon atoms, so-called silafulleranes. The second new class of materials are crystal building blocks made of 10 silicon and germanium atoms that have a diamond-like structure. Decisive insights into the electronic structures of the new compounds were provided by computer-based theoretical analyses from Stefan Grimme's research group in Bonn. 

The 20 silicon atoms of silafullerane form a dodecahedron, a body composed of regular pentagons. It encapsulates a chloride ion. A hydrogen atom protrudes outward at each silicon corner of the body. Doctoral student Marcel Bamberg, who synthesised the molecule, explains: "Our silafullerane is the long-sought progenitor of this new class of substances. The hydrogen atoms can easily be replaced with functional groups, thus giving the silafullerane different properties." Bonn quantum chemist Markus Bursch adds: "We support the targeted generation of potentially useful properties with theoretical predictions of their resulting effects." 

The silicon-germanium adamantane represents the building block of a mixed silicon-germanium alloy. Benedikt Köstler, who is developing the compounds as part of his doctoral thesis, says: "Recent studies have shown that silicon-germanium alloys are superior to pure silicon semiconductors in important application areas. However, the production of such alloys is very difficult and you often get mixtures of different compositions. We have succeeded in developing a simple synthesis path for the basic building block of silicon-germanium alloys. Our silicon-germanium adamantane therefore enables the investigation of important chemical and physical properties of silicon-germanium alloys on the molecular model. We also want to use it in the future to produce silicon-germanium alloys with faultless crystal structures." 

Carbon, which is chemically very similar to the elements silicon and germanium, occurs in comparable forms to the two new classes of substances: Hollow spheres of carbon atoms ("fullerenes") correspond to silafulleranes, and diamonds consisting of carbon are composed of adamantane subunits. Among other things, fullerenes increase the efficiency of organic solar cells, could make the batteries of electric cars safer, and promise progress in high-temperature superconductivity. Nanodiamonds also have a wide range of applications, from pharmaceuticals to catalysis research. 

Against this background, the researchers in Frankfurt and Bonn are excited to see in which fields their silafulleranes and silicon-germanium adamantanes will become established. Matthias Wagner says: "It is already possible to generate light in all colours of the visible spectrum with nanostructured silicon and germanium in the form of quantum dots, and this is being tested for computer and mobile phone displays, as well as in telecommunications. Apart from the chemical-technical potential, I am personally fascinated by the high symmetry of our compounds: For example, our silafullerane is one of the five Platonic solids and possesses a timeless beauty." 

Publications: 

(1) Marcel Bamberg, Markus Bursch, Andreas Hansen, Matthias Brandl, Gabriele Sentis, Lukas Kunze, Michael Bolte, Hans-Wolfram Lerner, Stefan Grimme, Matthias Wagner: [Cl@Si20H20]−: Parent Siladodecahedrane with Endohedral Chloride Ion. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2021, 143, 10865–10871 https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.1c05598 

(2) Benedikt Köstler, Michael Bolte, Hans-Wolfram Lerner, Matthias Wagner: Selective One-Pot Syntheses of Mixed Silicon-Germanium Heteroadamantane Clusters. Chem. Eur. J. https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.202102732 Images for download: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/105049499 

Captions: 

(1) The silicon sphere [Cl@Si20H20]−, synthesised for the first time by chemists from Goethe University Frankfurt, promises new applications in semiconductor technology. Blue: silicon, green: chloride ion, grey: hydrogen. Graphic: Goethe University Frankfurt 

(2) Building block for silicon-germanium alloys: A section of the silicon-germanium adamantane synthesised in Frankfurt (shown here without substituents). Blue: silicon, magenta: germanium. Graphic: Goethe University Frankfurt 

Further information

Professor Matthias Wagner
Institute for Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry
Goethe University Frankfurt
Tel.: +49 69 798 29156
matthias.wagner@chemie.uni-frankfurt.de

A long-term hazard from flood water is often underestimated: The raging rivers swirl up pollutants out of their sediments that stem from environmental pollution decades or centuries ago. Such harmful substances can not only cause ecological damage in the river. They can also deposit themselves on flooded areas and affect crops, grazing livestock and humans. This has been pointed out by an international research team in a review of scientific studies on flood events throughout the world. The paper has been published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials and was produced under the leadership of Goethe University.

FRANKFURT. Sediments are regarded as a river's long-term memory. They mainly comprise particles that are eroded from the ground, ending up at some point in river deltas or the sea. However, sediments can also remain stable for a relatively long time – and bind pollutants which, for example, have entered the rivers through mining or industrial wastewater. As a consequence, many old river sediments contain pollutants as “chemical time bombs", such as heavy metals or dioxins and dioxin-like compounds that are not easily degradable.

During flood events in the more industrial regions of Europe, North America and Asia, old sediments can be churned up as a result of the high speeds at which the water is flowing. In the process, the pollutants bound in them are regularly released in one go and contaminate flooded areas. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Goethe University, RWTH Aachen University and the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, along with other partners, has compiled a review of previous scientific studies on this topic. In it, the researchers, headed by junior research group leader Dr Sarah Crawford in Frankfurt and Canadian researcher Professor Markus Brinkmann, show, for example, which pollutant loads were measured after various flood events, which test systems were developed for different pollutants and how different sediments behave when water flows at high speeds. It describes the risks for drinking water production, the influence of temperature on pollutant intake by fish and methods for assessing the economic costs associated with the remobilisation of pollutants.

Despite the many years of research on this subject, Henner Hollert, professor of environmental toxicology at Goethe University and senior author of the publication in hand, is greatly concerned: “I have the impression that the problem of pollutants from old sediments is greatly underestimated in Germany and also in Europe as a whole. One reason for this could also be that to date there have been practically no studies at all on the economic consequences of this problem, as we've been able to show. However, contaminated sediments are a ticking time bomb that can explode each time there's a flood. What we need now is good river management across the board that not only looks at immediate hazards for humans, animals and infrastructure but also at the long-term consequences resulting from pollutants in the riverbeds. It's imperative, for example, that we examine flooded areas used agriculturally for river-specific pollutants so that these do not end up on our plates in the form of meat and dairy products."

In an interdisciplinary approach, researchers from Goethe University Frankfurt, in collaboration with RWTH Aachen University, the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE), the Senckenberg Institute, the LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics and many other partners, are also studying the recent extreme flood events in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia in terms of hydraulic engineering and the biological, ecotoxicological, ecological, geoscientific but also the social-ecological and economic consequences. These studies are embedded in the new research cluster RobustNature at Goethe University, which is examining the robustness and resilience of nature-society systems in the changing Anthropocene and aims to contribute to knowledge-based transformation research using the examples of biodiversity and water – that is, from knowledge to action.

Publication: Sarah E. Crawford, Markus Brinkmann, Jacob D. Ouellet, Frank Lehmkuhl, Klaus Reicherter, Jan Schwarzbauer, Piero Bellanova, Peter Letmathe, Lars M. Blank, Roland Weber, Werner Brack, Joost T. van Dongen, Lucas Menzel, Markus Hecker, Holger Schüttrumpf & Henner Hollert: Remobilization of pollutants during extreme flood events poses severe risks to human and environmental health. Journal of Hazardous Materials 421 (2022) 126691 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.126691

The article is freely accessible from the publisher's following link for the next six weeks: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1dSu515DSlK2Np  

Picture material can be downloaded from:
www.uni-frankfurt.de/103948311

Caption: The remobilisation of pollutants from sediments during severe flooding is a so far underestimated consequence of extreme events. Graphics: Crawford, S. et al. (2021) J. Haz. Mat.

Further information
Professor Henner Hollert
Department of Evolutionary Ecology and Environmental Toxicology
Institute of Ecology, Diversity and Evolution
Goethe University
and
LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics
Phone +49 69 798-42171 and +49-151-14042119
hollert@bio.uni-frankfurt.de
https://www.bio.uni-frankfurt.de/43970666/AK_Hollert

Korean Studies at Goethe University is one of what are known as “rare disciplines" (subjects with a small number of professors taught in only a few locations), so it is all the more impressive that it has now secured € 700,000 in third-party funding. The money is being invested in the project “Cultivating diversity: The global in Korea, Korea in the global" and should contribute to advancing teaching, research and regional collaboration in the field of Korean Studies.

FRANKFURT. Since 2010, there has been an area studies section at Goethe University dedicated to Korean Studies, hosted by the Institute of East Asian Philology. The number of students has risen from 20 at the outset to 400 today – and interest is continuing to grow, says Yonson Ahn, who, as the only professor for this subject, teaches Korean culture and society at the university. With the support of third-party funding, she can now better meet the growing demand for courses in this subject. The Academy of Korean Studies (AKS) has pledged around € 700,000 in funding for the next five years, which will be invested in research, teaching and outreach.

“I'm very pleased about this successful acquisition of third-party funds. Korean Studies is a rare discipline with considerable appeal. Thanks to Professor Ahn, Goethe University has made a name for itself in this field beyond geographical borders," says Professor Bernhard Brüne, Goethe University's vice president for research. The funds, provided by the South Korean Ministry of Education, are intended to boost Korean Studies abroad (from a Korean perspective – “Empowering Korean Studies through innovative education, research and regional cooperation in Germany").  Apart from Goethe University, the University of Oxford was the only other European beneficiary awarded funding in 2021. The Frankfurt research project deals with ethnic and cultural diversity in Korea and in Korean populations in other countries. The title is: “Cultivating diversity: The global in Korea, Korea in the global".

Funding approval was preceded by two successfully completed projects financed with third-party funds within the Seed Programme for Korean Studies, which each ran for three years – from 2015 to 2021. Their purpose too was research and the further development of the Korean Studies programme. Within the framework of the Korean Studies Promotion Programme of the AKS, Korean Studies at Goethe University has now qualified for the follow-up project “Core University Programme for Korean Studies", which will last five years – from June 2021 to May 2026.

In this project, Korean Studies in Frankfurt, headed by Professor Ahn, is working closely together with Korean Studies at the University of Hamburg under Professor Yvonne Schulz Zinda and Korean Studies at the University of Bonn under Junior Professor Nadeschda Bachem. The aim, in particular, is to establish a comprehensive cross-university network between the institutes in order to further develop teaching, support for early career researchers, public relations work and joint research projects, and in so doing also boost Korean Studies within the Interdisciplinary Centre for East Asian Studies (IZO) at Goethe University.

In the area of teaching, new seminars are to be designed and implemented within the framework of the project and digital teaching expanded. To support young students, the intention is to jointly supervise their master's theses and doctoral dissertations. In addition, there are plans to work together more closely with secondary school pupils. In order to make Korean Studies more visible, special attention will be given to public relations work. Low-threshold offers should facilitate access to topics in the field of Korean Studies.

A total of nine further researchers are working on a broad spectrum of interdisciplinary, transnational and intersectional topics in the framework of the project “Cultivating diversity: The global in Korea, Korea in the global" led by Yonson Ahn. Migration, gender, art and media, among others, are featured topics.

Goethe University remains Hessen's only university with a focus on area studies in Asian studies. After other Asia-related institutes were transferred to Frankfurt in 2008, the Interdisciplinary Centre for East Asian Studies (IZO) was established at the university. Since then, Korean Studies has grown in significance both qualitatively and quantitatively. Students can start the Korean Studies programme without any previous knowledge. Apart from the language itself, the programme also covers the country's politics, culture and literature. Professor Yonson Ahn attributes its great popularity to the success of Korean film and pop culture, such as the boy band BTS or the films Parasites and Minari, which have won Oscars as well as prizes in Cannes. Graduates definitely have good future prospects: Frankfurt is home to the second largest number of Korean expatriates in Europe, while a large number of Korean companies, a Korean trade agency (KOTRA) and a Korean consulate are located in the city.

A photograph of Professor Yonson Ahn can be downloaded from: www.uni-frankfurt.de/103380737

Caption: Professor Yonson Ahn teaches Korean culture and society at Goethe University Frankfurt.

Further Information
Professor Yonson Ahn
Korean Studies
Goethe University
Email: Y.Ahn@em.uni-frankfurt.de
Phone: +49 (0)69 798-23769 / -22872
Fax:  +49 (0)69 798-24969
www.korea.uni-frankfurt.de