In 2013, Johanna Quandt once again significantly increased her engagement for the life sciences in Berlin. She provided Stiftung Charité with a separate contribution of 40 million euros - to date one of the largest donations by a private individual in Germany. With these additional funds, Stiftung Charité launched its Johanna Quandt Private Excellence Initiative. The main focus of this initiative, which was designed to run for a total of ten years, was to support outstanding individuals at all stages of scientific and clinical careers - from students to Nobel Prize winners, from basic researchers to clinicians.
The Private Excellence Initiative went hand in hand with the establishment of the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) in 2013 and its extensive public funding from the German Federal Government and the State of Berlin for the Berlin life sciences in general and the translational cooperation of Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Charité) and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in particular.
Among the grantees are excellent scientists who have received numerous prestigious awards: Nobel Prize winners, grantees of the European Research Council, and Leibniz Prize winners.
In addition, many of the funded fellows and grantees are from universities and hospitals all over the world and come to Berlin to join the life sciences community. The vast majority of these grantees from abroad come from North America or Europe. Fostering internationalization has thus become a signature feature of the Private Excellence Initiative. The percentage distribution is 33% for Europe, 43% for USA/Canada, 3% for Asia and 21% for Germany.
Only the funding programs that recruit scientists to Berlin are counted here: Einstein BIH Visiting Fellows, Humboldt Research Grants at BIH, Recruiting Grants, BIH Delbrück Fellows, BIH Visiting Professors, BIH Johanna Quandt Professors, Short Term Fellows. Hired employees are counted towards the country of origin of the funding recipient.
Some of the funding programs developed by Stiftung Charité as part of the Private Excellence Initiative were so innovative and successful that they have been adopted by other funding institutions. These include the Clinician Scientist Program, which was developed and piloted byStiftung Charité to promote clinical researchers in the phase of specialist training, the Johanna Quandt Professorships, which focused early on the promotion of women with a genuine tenure track and on thematic openness in the call for professorships, or the Visiting Fellows Program, established together with the Einstein Foundation Berlin, which has taken the international collaborations of leading scientists in Germany to a new level.
On September 21, 2022, the Stiftung Charité celebrated the successful completion of the Private Excellence Initiative in Berlin with many companions, cooperation partners and, above all, its 550 grantees. Individual projects will continue to be funded until the end of 2024.
Stiftung Charité maintains many of the particularly successful programs of the Private Excellence Initiative beyond 2022, while refining them conceptually. They shape Stiftung Charité's current research funding activities.
Contact
Marie Hoffmann
General Manager
Stiftung Charité
Novalisstraße 10
10115 Berlin
Telefon: +49 (0)30 450 570 - 586
E-mail: hoffmann(at)stiftung-charite.de
Internet: www.stiftung-charite.de