For the second time, the partners in the Berlin University Alliance – Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin – and their partner university, the University of Oxford, have approved seed funding for joint research projects. The prerequisite for submitting a research proposal was that at least one of the four Berlin institutions and the University of Oxford needed to be involved. Funding is available for, among other things, workshops, short-term research stays, and travel grants for researchers, including graduate students and postdocs. The projects are intended to support further efforts to raise third-party funding from the European Union and from donors in Germany and Great Britain.

The Berlin partners and the University of Oxford are funding the projects with 300,000 euros. In addition, another 150,000 euros are being contributed by the Berlin Institute of Health and the Medical Sciences Division as well as other institutions of the University of Oxford. The projects will start on November 1.

The first call for proposals for seed funding took place in the summer of 2018. At that time 29 projects from the humanities, natural sciences, and life sciences were selected for funding.