With the formation of the Berlin University Alliance, the four Alliance partners – Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin – want to develop the research hub of Berlin into an integrated research environment. In order to bring the five objectives and three cross-cutting themes to life, new staff members will support the new overarching work structure and joint projects.

On June 1, 2020, Christina Camier took over the position of Head of Press and Communications at the Berlin University Alliance. She previously was employed as a Press and Communications Officer for the Kopernikus project “Energy Transition Navigation System” (Enavi) at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS). The public outreach team is located in the Administrative Office and works in close cooperation with the alliance partners’ press offices, informing German and international target groups about the projects being carried out by the alliance.

Fabian Kruse, a former researcher in the Collaborative Research Center 1078 – Protonation Dynamics in Protein Function and Project Manager for the educational reform projects educationZEN and lab:present at Technische Universität Berlin, has taken over as Program Manager for Knowledge Exchange / Science Communication (Objective 2: Fostering Knowledge Exchange). The Alliance partners have set themselves the objective of communicating research ideas and findings to the outside world and allowing external perspectives and experiences to flow back into their research. The exchange between researchers and individuals from different areas of society and the establishment of new formats and innovation processes is central to this idea.

Nele Albrecht has been the Scientific Coordinator responsible for research quality (Objective 3: Advancing Research Quality and Value) since May 15, 2020. Before that, she was employed as personal assistant to the Berlin head of department of the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies and a coordinator at the Robert K. Merton Center for Science Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Stefan Skupien, previously a researcher and project manager at the WZB Berlin Social Science Research Center, has been playing a part in Objective 3 as Research Coordinator since June 1, 2020. Research quality is to be established as an integral value of outstanding and socially relevant research within the framework of the university consortium of Excellence. For this purpose, the Berlin University Alliance partners will pool their activities in this field together and address questions of research quality within the scope of interplay between disciplinary cultures, research organizations and the public. A Center for Open and Responsible Research (CORe) will be established for coordination purposes, which will help to support the structural framework of new research projects, such as project planning, third-party funding, consolidation of new research, and implementation formats with a corresponding agenda setting.