General Information
In 2007, a department for „Science and Technology of Life, Light and Matter“ (LL&M) was established at the University of Rostock as focal point between natural (agricultural included) and engineering sciences and medicine. The department is part of the Interdisciplinary Faculty (INF) which includes, in addition to the LL&M, three other departments: Maritime Systems, Aging of Individual and Society (from 2007 on both) and Science-Culture-Transformation (from 2010 on).
Over the first years, the work of the LL&M department focused on interconnecting working teams and topics from different scientific discipline. Not everybody was aware of the benefits he/she could get from working in the department. It can be considered as a success that many persons with LL&M related research fields applied for participation in the department. At the time being, 45 members from five faculties of the University of Rostock as well as the Leibniz Institutes for Atmospheric Physics and Catalysis and the Teaching and Test Institute for Welding Technology are active in the department.
In the context of junior researcher education, more than 50 fellows have got the chance to participate in soft and hard skill courses in addition to their relevant subject-specific education via an interdisciplinary approach postgraduate network.
Objective
LL&M mainly considers itself as research department and sees this as acid test for working successfully on the identification of current research topics, acquiring third-party funds and closely cooperating with extra-university institutes and companies, aiming to not limiting the progress achieved in laboratories to basic research. This department aims, as much as the three others, at sharpening the university’s profile and increasing the international competitiveness via related job policy, interdisciplinary research projects and strengthening the attractiveness via external perception. The achievement of these objectives has been achieved via numerous small projects which have been continued or started in the department environment. Outstanding are the successful acquisition of the new research building, the second and third prolongation of the DFG special research area 652 and the participation in the excellence research projects Light2Hydrogen and REMEDIS (research projects).