A scientific, business and media centre like no other in Germany? “What a brilliant idea!” Günther Tränkle is Director of the Ferdinand Braun Institute for High Frequency Technology (FBH) and he is astounded time and again by the ingenious surroundings in which he works: the FBH is part of the Berlin-Adlershof Technology Park. There are a large number of knowledge clusters like this in Germany, but very few are as successful as Adlershof with its twelve research institutes, two research annexes, six natural science departments of the renowned Humboldt University as well as numerous businesses and film studios. Physicists refer to such a concentration of research establishments as a “critical mass”, since the close proximity facilitates cooperation, and this cooperation eventually generates the new ideas and new products that make this high-technology location so valuable not only for Berlin.
The results this “critical mass” can achieve are demonstrated by Günther Tränkle’s FBH. The institute’s scientists very effectively transform the findings of their applied research into marketable products. For example, they have developed very high-power laser diodes for industry. These make possible a painless disinfection process that obviates the need to use chemicals when a dentist extracts a tooth. These diodes from the “engineering shack”, as Tränkle sometimes likes to call his institute with a smirk on his face, are also facilitating precise ignition in internal combustion engines in a joint project with the Bosch company. Propulsion units using this technology will soon be able reduce fuel consumption by 10%.
With all this resourcefulness around it should come as no surprise that the Ferdinand Braun Institute has founded five independent companies in the last ten years, four of which have been highly successful on the market. “We are very glad to be at the Adlershof location. The variety of specialist subjects and the research mix is extremely attractive,” explains Tränkle. Four hundred companies with almost 4,300 employees now research and produce at the high-technology park. These are impressive figures – and yet only a small part of the German capital’s total research landscape is concentrated at Adlershof. “Berlin offers a very high standard in terms of higher education and research accomplishment. The city can be very proud of this capability,” says Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann. Four universities, 17 colleges and universities of applied sciences, more than 70 public and private institutes as well as more than 20 technology centres do indeed form one of the most closely knit research and higher education networks in Europe. A total of 29 Nobel Prize winners conducted research at the Humboldt University alone, including Albert Einstein, Otto Hahn and Werner Heisenberg. Gerhardt Ertl, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2007, also works in the German capital. A large proportion of the roughly 137,000 students in Berlin are studying a technological or scientific subject. With Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, Berlin is one of the winners of the Excellence Initiative organized by the Federal Government and the Länder. Higher education institutions in Berlin recently received approval for four excellence clusters and seven graduate schools; the Free University, the region’s second largest institution of higher education after Humboldt University, was recently granted the title of excellence university. An outstanding reputation is also enjoyed by the Charité, Europe’s largest teaching hospital. Run jointly by the Humboldt University and the Free University, the Charité is Berlin’s second largest employer after Deutsche Bahn with 3,500 beds, 8,000 students, 15,000 employees and an annual turnover of 1.8 billion euros.
The excellent reputation of the higher education institutions in the German capital is attracting more and more students from abroad to the entire Berlin-Brandenburg region. Some 40% of scholars at Europa University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) – Germany’s most eastern higher education institution – and 25% of those at the Brandenburg Technical University in Cottbus come from outside Germany. On average, 15% of Berlin’s students are not holders of German passports. Over 1,500 cooperation agreements link the universities with partner institutions all over the world.
Graduates also have favourable chances of finding a job in the region. Outside colleges and universities, more than 50,000 researchers work in private and public research institutions – that represnts roughly 15% of all the people in Germany who work in the research sector. In Berlin you will find research institutes of the Fraunhofer Society, the Max Planck Society, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Scientific Community and the Helmholtz Association of National Research Centres. A total of 1.8 billion euros a year of public investment flow into Berlin’s science and research sector. This investment pays off: 13% of all scientific patent registrations in Germany come from the capital city region.
Many of them come from the life sciences sector. Berlin ranks first in this area of research. Some 370 companies in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical technology field and many smaller institutes are working with the Charité to gain new scientific knowledge. They are focusing, for example, on the field of nutrigenomics research, which studies nutrition-related diseases and develops products for their prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Participating in this work are the German Institute for Nutritional Research and the two Max Planck Institutes for Molecular Plant Physiology and Molecular Genetics as well as Bayer Biosciences and Metanomics, subsidiaries of the global players Bayer and BASF. Dr. Arno Krotzky, Chief Executive of the Bayer subsidiary, cannot imagine a better place to work, “The Berlin-Brandenburg Region offers an ideal and internationally unparalleled scientific and technical environment for this kind of research and development work.”
This view is also shared by many representatives of the solar industry. A cluster of producers, suppliers and service providers with the strongest growth in Europe has developed in the German capital. Some 4,000 people research and produce this clean form of energy – and the figure is increasing. The German Conergy company has invested 250 million euros in the world’s most modern fully integrated solar wafer production plant. First Solar Manufacturing is building the world’s largest thin-film solar module factory. What solar technology from Berlin can achieve is demonstrated by the façade of the Ferdinand Braun Institute for High Frequency Technology in Adlershof: a solar wall covering an area of eight by eighty metres collects solar energy to generate electricity. It goes without saying that the institute in this city of science does not use conventional solar cells that present a bluish sheen in the sun. The solar cells on the FBH building are made of a grey-coloured mixture of copper, indium and sulphur. These cells are not only significantly cheaper than conventional products, they will probably be able to make photovoltaic technology, which is still very expensive today, competitive in a number of years. The manufacturer of the solar wall is – what a surprise – also a company from the Adlershof Technology Park: Sulfurcell. What is more, this company was founded in 2001 as a spin-off from the Hahn Meitner Institute, whose photovoltaic department in Adlershof had developed the new compound for transforming solar energy into electric current. FBH Director Günther Tränkle is right: the development of the Berlin-Adlershof high-technology centre really was a brilliant idea.
