Mercator Research Groups
Collaborative research, discipline networking, scientific teams: these three terms describe the idea behind the Ruhr University Bochum's institutional strategy to promote top-level research that helped it to reach the final round of the German Central and Regional Government's Excellence Initiative in 2007. The central elements of the institutional strategy are now being implemented with the assistance of the North Rhine-Westphalian Innovation Ministry and Stiftung Mercator. Stiftung Mercator's funds are being used to set up two Mercator research groups at the Ruhr University Bochum.
Structure and Organization
In each of the research groups, junior professors will work on an interdisciplinary research project under excellent conditions. Senior research professors with many years of experience will be available to provide advice and support. The "mentors", scientists of international repute from Germany or overseas, will be selected by the young researchers who invite them to join the project.
In the first Mercator Research Group, "Memory Structures", three junior professors and eight doctoral candidates will be working in three teams researching the functional architecture, neurobiology and theory of memory. Which brain structures contribute to memory content? How do we select what we remember and what we forget? Are there aspects of memory that only human beings have? These are three questions that the researchers in the first Mercator Research Group will be seeking answers to. The second Mercator research group "Spaces of Anthropological Knowledge" startet November 2010.
Objectives
Stiftung Mercator's objective is to support research in the Ruhr science region with the Mercator Research Groups and to give junior professors the opportunity to experience independent research in a team with international scientific colleagues of high repute.
