Cooperation approach
To bring together researchers from different academic and institutional backgrounds and to implement a true collaborative research activity, we build on the proposed major instruments: tandem projects and projects using identical paradigms in animals and humans that assemble researchers from the different institutions around one specific research topic and which are expected to relatively quickly create strong incentives for further collaboration through publication success visible in the short- to mid-term; the integrative neuroscience group and the computational neuroscience group that form institutionalized and stable linking elements between human and molecular-cellular neuroscientists and thus guarantee longer-term collaboration; and the graduate school which uses advisors from different neuroscientific disciplines and creates an important future “human resource” by training young scientists in interdisciplinary thinking.
Further instruments will be used. A common lecture series, methods seminars, conferences and workshops will help develop knowledge but also provide a forum for interaction between researchers. The cluster will perform an annual retreat in a remote location. During the 3 day retreat, strategic workgroups will review the cluster’s achievements and identify new common areas. Members of the international scientific advisory board will also be invited to provide external guidance. In addition, a “special guest” will be invited by the PhD students. Special guest are leading neuroscientists who agree to an intense interaction with the scientists of the consortium during one whole day.
Finally, the cluster will exploit existing instruments of collaboration. Within the framework of the ongoing International Research Training Group (GRK 1247) "Cross-modal Interaction in Natural and Artificial Cognitive Systems", cooperation between Neuroscience and the Department of Informatics has already been established. The main campus of the Department of Informatics is located only at a few kilometres distance to the University Medical Center. Research activities in Neuro-Informatics will further be intensified through a new professorship in Informatics. Through the international cooperation with Tsinghua University (Bejing, China), especially with the Centre of Learning and Memory (Prof. Guosong Liu), synergistic effects will be achieved by the combination of animal experiments and computational neuroscience.
There is already a close collaboration with researchers in Lübeck. This has been initiated by founding the neuroimaging centre NeuroImage Nord as a collaboration between Hamburg, Lübeck and Kiel in 2002. The excellent cooperation emerging from this centre is documented by numerous joint publications in the field of neurodegeneration. Since then the collaboration has been extended to other groups in Lübeck, including the Dept. of Neuroendocrinology (Jan Born), and only recently this link has been further strengthened by incorporating Hamburg (Büchel) into the SFB 654 in Lübeck (Born).
The Neurocenter at Schön Klinik Hamburg Eilbek will serve as a reach-out for translation of interventional evidence from animals to humans. By 2010 the center will treat approximately 200 neurorehabilitatve in- and out-patients and is equipped with magnetic resonance imaging facilities and research staff on site.
