Uni Bayreuth goes Australia

The University of Bayreuth has been engaged in intensive collaboration with universities in Australia for many years. The focus is on Melbourne, however, the University is also partners with Sydney, Newcastle, Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast, and Perth. The emphasis of cooperation is on student and staff mobility in addition to research collaboration. The subject areas involved in the cooperation include sport science, law, economics, energy and environmental research, the natural sciences, materials science, and engineering. The Bayreuth-Melbourne Colloid/Polymer-Network, established in 2015 and supported by the DAAD through 2020, is a focal point of the cooperation. After establishing its first Gateway Office in Shanghai in April 2016, the University of Bayreuth will now be launching its Gateway Office in Melbourne on 26 June 2018. The Gateway Office will be located at the University of Melbourne in the offices of the Australian-German Energy Transition Hub.

Embedded in the current trend to pursue extended and intensified German-Australian cooperation in science and business, the network represents a flagship project for the University of Bayreuth. The University of Bayreuth's international visibility and attractiveness have increased considerably as a result of cooperation with two of Australia's leading universities, Melbourne and Monash. This is illustrated by the notable increase in international applications that have been received by the University of Bayreuth since the start of the project. The cooperation between the University of Bayreuth and its Australian partners features a concentration of successful joint research projects with multi-national funding as well as intensive scientific exchange and active mobility in both directions, e.g. numerous research stays by students and researchers and joint courses held in the scope of the Bayreuth International Summer School.

The Bayreuth-Melbourne Colloid/Polymer Network focuses on developing innovative materials for applications in the energy sector (for example, efficient solar cells and LEDs) and in medicine (for example, 3D biomaterials). The network brings together the University of Bayreuth and other German and international research institutes that are also leaders in polymer and colloid science (e.g. the Leibniz Institute for New Materials in Saarbrücken, IPF Dresden, the Forschungszentrum Jülich, the University of Melbourne, Monash University, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and industrial partners such as the Chemistry Cluster Bavaria). This has made a Joint PhD possible at both leading Australian universities for Bayreuth's doctoral researchers in this field.