International cooperation is perfectly normal among top researchers. In Germany, numerous institutions have already been maintaining successful contacts with research partners around the world, also in Latin America. This kind of interchange is especially strong with Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Specialists in the most diverse disciplines work together on new insights and innovations.
Eduardo Arzt is one of these specialists. The molecular biologist who works at Universidad de Buenos Aires is considered an expert on brain disease and is the designated director of the Max Planck Society’s new partner institute for biomedicine, which will officially open in Buenos Aires at the end of October 2011. “Today’s research requires this kind of cooperation,” emphasizes Arzt. “It’s a real win-win situation. We profit from the latest technologies and the knowledge of our Max Planck colleagues and can supply the most highly motivated and highly qualified young scientists.” Studies at the biomedical institute will centre on the search for new active agents against specific molecular biological causes of depression. However, the German-Argentine project is not only intended to promote practical research, but also scientific exchange in general. “We want to spread the Max Planck philosophy in the region.”
The Helmholtz Association, Germany’s largest research organization, and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, which specializes on applied research, are both active in Chile. Helmholtz is researching the effects of climate change in Santiago de Chile, the metropolis with six million inhabitants, while the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is currently setting up the Center for Systems Biology. Among other things, German and Chilean scientists there will be engaged in developing test methods for the early detection of diseases in salmon farming.
TU Bergakademie Freiberg is running a project of a very different kind in Bolivia. There, on the edge of the Atacama Desert, lies Salar de Uyuni, one of the world’s largest salt lakes, from which the metal lithium
is extracted. The experts from TU Bergakademie Freiberg have been able to provide crucial help, for example, with what is known as the Freiberg evaporating body. A patent already exists for this apparatus for the low-cost evaporation of salt-solutions and extraction of lithium. The idea was developed in cooperation with the mining engineer Jaime Claros of the Universidad Autónoma in Potosi, Bolivia. Claros studied and completed his doctorate at the TU Bergakademie Freiberg. “Freiberg has been cultivating close relations with Potosi for decades,” says mineralogist Gerhard Heide. The Lithium Initiative Freiberg was founded in 2009. The goal of this German-Bolivian collaboration is the further investigation of the lithium deposits and the development of new extraction methods and application technologies, above all for lithium-ion batteries, which will make a significant contribution to electromobility in the future.
Cooperation is also important in the field of environmental protection and the preservation of natural resources. As a result, scientists funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) have been working in the mountains of southern Ecuador for over ten years now on new strategies for sustainable land use that simultaneously protects biodiversity. The region of the San Francisco valley is considered a “hotspot” of species diversity. The German researchers are conducting research into the forest ecosystem and its reforestation in close cooperation with colleagues from Ecuador. The scientific discoveries benefit not only the natural environment, but also the farmers and users of the forests in the region.
