Umbrella Partnership

 

Israel Institute of Technology, RWTH Aachen University, and Forschungszentrum Jülich

Copyright: Technion - Israel Institute of Technology  

The Umbrella Cooperation between RWTH Aachen University, Forschungszentrum Jülich, and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology – was established in 1983. The partners signed a cooperation agreement with the aim “to strengthen the cooperation in science and technology.”

This strategic partnership is considered a major driver of high-impact cross-border research. The Technion in Haifa is Israel’s oldest university. Among its 610 faculty members, there are three Nobel laureates.

All three partners are considered to be excellent research institutions and therefore the exchange under the Umbrella collaboration has been highly fruitful on an academic and personal level. In order to promote the aims of Umbrella partnership, different tools have been established, such as symposia and project funding:

 

Symposium

Since its beginning an essential element of the cooperation has been the annual Umbrella Symposium which focuses on highly relevant research topics. Each partner holds the symposia in rotation and a scientific coordinator is appointed according to the topic. In recent years the topics were:

Year	Location	Topic
2015	Haifa	Biomaterials and Biohybrids from Basic Research to Medical Applications
2016	Jülich	When Life Sciences and Engineering Converge
2017	Aachen	Quantum Information and Technology
2018	Haifa	Energy Conversion and Energy Storage
2019	Jülich	Energy Conversion and Energy Storage
2020	Aachen	Life Science and Engineering; Data Analytics, Neuro Science and Multiscale Approaches and Applications

 

Umbrella Award

Since 2018 the newly created Umbrella Award, worth 5,000 euros, has been established as a new measure to support excellent and outstanding researchers. The Umbrella Award is presented to one scientist of each institution who works in the annual symposium’s respective key topic.

“The Umbrella Award is unique at the national level, and through the support from the Deutsche Technion Gesellschaft e.V., it is of international relevance as well. The award comes with a grant to enhance collaboration and support the exchange of researchers between Germany and Israel. The aim is to make the award recipient more internationally mobile and provide them with a competitive edge,” explains Professor Joachim Mayer, head of the RWTH Institute of Microstructural Analysis and the University’s academic coordinator of the Umbrella Collaboration. A call for nominations is announced each year in November.

Research Exchange – Summer and Winter Schools

Since 2018 the symposia are accompanied by Summer or Winter Schools. Experts of the three partner institutions cover a wide range of methods in current research for master students, doctoral candidates and early-stage postdocs. The Schools take up the key topics of the annual symposia, and therefore participating researchers have the chance to stay in touch with their colleagues. One of the key objectives of the Umbrella Consortium is to foster international mobility of early career researchers. Both, the Umbrella Award as well as the Winter School will further enhance these objectives.

In addition to that, Umbrella supports scientific exchange travels between Israel and Germany. Through Umbrella research stays have been established and continue on an annual basis.

Current Delegates for Umbrella

Technion Haifa	Prof. W. Kaplan, Executive Vice President for Research
Forschungszentrum Jülich	Prof. S. M. Schmidt, Member of the Board of Directors
RWTH Aachen University	Prof. J. Mayer, Rector’s Delegate for Cooperation with the Technion