Dr. Christina Reinhardt
Chancellor of the Ruhr-University Bochum
Agile, Effective, and Relevant: How the Science System Has Proven Its Efficiency
The coronavirus pandemic highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of different systems and the science system particularly demonstrated its strength under the conditions of the pandemic.
The pandemic has seen the conversion of the entire teaching program to a virtual format in a very short time, the maintenance of technical and administrative operations despite the ever-changing regulations, the immensely important contributions made by a wide variety of research fields – from infectious medicine, epidemiology, and psychology to computer science, social sciences, and economics – and, finally, the contributions made by science communication to the understanding of the pandemic.
The question is: What factors contributed to the fact that the system of science was able to play out its strengths in this form?