"A year of change" is how 2020 can be described at the TUM School of Life Sciences. First, the School had to deal with the challenges of the global pandemic. "With a huge effort, we converted our courses to online formats," reports Becker. As a result, he says, teaching and research operations could be maintained despite the restrictions. For 2021, however, he would like to see more personal contacts and more scientific discourse in direct conversation.
New governance structure at the TUM School of Life Sciences
Professor Becker has also announced that the extraordinary times have been used to make the change from the former Wissenschaftszentrum Weihenstephan to the the TUM School of Life Sciences as the first of a total of seven planned schools at the TUM. This has established a guideline for the setting up of the other six schools.
A lot of convincing had to be done before changes could be made in the governance structure, “but not so much will actually change,” says Becker. Instead of the previous six research departments, research will be organised into three departments: Molecular Life Sciences, Life Science Systems, and Life Science Engineering. The biggest changes are in the area of studies. Instead of being divided into six study faculties as before, there is now only one school with several study areas. However, the study programs or subjects will initially remain the same.
Expansion of the technological infrastructure
A new feature of this reorganisation is that plant and animal science operations in the TUM TechCores can now be managed directly from Freising. Research projects will be able to be better organized in the Plant Technology Center (PTC) and Animal Research Center (ARC), which are to be built. An example of such an overarching core facility is the Bavarian Center for Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry (BayBioMS) already located in Freising - a multi-million dollar science and technology platform of the TUM that provides state-of-the-art proteomics and metabolomics tools for application in biomedicine, plant, and food research.
Closer collaborations between biology and medicine will also be made possible by the construction of a new research building of the Center for Integrated Infection Prevention (ZIP). Expecting the project to have “international luminosity” Becker says, “We hope to break ground for the new ZIP building in 2021 or 2022 at the latest, despite the many financial burdens on the Bavarian State.”
Excellent personnel
Excellent teaching requires excellent personnel, which is why Professor Becker is pleased to have appointed several new professors again in 2020.
Professor Senthold Asseng (Digital Agriculture) and Professor Kong Yu (Precision Agriculture) have been appointed to the research department of Life Science Engineering.
Professor Peter Annighöfer (Forest and Agroforestry Systems) and Professor Monika Egerer (Urban Productive Ecosystems) have been appointed to the research department of Life Science Systems.
Professors Patrick Bienert (Crop Physiology) and Lindsay Hall (Intestinal Microbiome) have been appointed to the research department of Molecular Life Sciences, and finally Professor Andreas Meisterernst (Department of Food Law) and Professor Millena Ouzunova ( Department of Plant Breeding) have been appointed as new honorary professors.
Prof. Becker particularly emphasizes the international character of the appointments and sees it as a “task for the next few years” to continue to appoint many new staff members from all over the world.
Professors Karl-Heinz-Engle (chair of General Food Technology), Horst-Christian Langowski (Chair of Food Packaging Technology), Urs Schmidhalter (Chair of Plant Nutrition) and Johannes Schnyder (Chair of Grassland Science) all retired in 2020 and are thanked for their extensive service to the TUM and the inspiration they have provided.
Award for researchers
Among the many excellent professors at the TUM School of Life Sciences, there are still always some who stand out. For example, these five researchers are awarded for being among the most cited researchers worldwide in 2020: Prof. Ingrid Kögel-Knabner (Department of Soil Science), Prof. Hans Pretzsch (Dept. of Forest Growth Science), Prof. Michael Schloter (honorary Professor of Forest Biology), Prof. Wolfgang Weisser (Dept.of Terrestrial Ecology) and Prof Rupert Seidl (Ecosystem Dynamics and Forest Management in Mountain Landscapes). Prof Seidl, notes Dean Becker, was only appointed in 2019 but has already made a good impression.
Support from the city of Freising
Dean Becker is seen extending a special thanks to the city of Freising. He emphasizes, “We are very happy to be in Freising.” The fact that the city offers its own science prize and also annually awards prizes for the best final theses in the six different study areas is appreciated beyond measure, he says.
In his video message, Freising’s mayor, Tobias Eschenbacher, states that he is pleased that in the course of the restructuring of the school, Freising has once again taken on a pioneering role. The Freising campus is “a model for future-oriented developments and life-oriented, interdisciplinary research.”
According to Eschenbacher, The TUM School of Life Sciences “makes many of the most important contributions to solving the most significant challenges of our time: for example, in dealing with the consequences of climate change and the development of sustainable agriculture.” Thus, it also provides incentive to drive forward climate protection at the local level.
Mayor Eschenbacher hopes that the joint lecture series between the city and the university, “TUM@Freising” will be continued this year. “Having researchers explain first hand and in person what they are working on is a great offer to the citizens of Freising and their guests, which (due to restrictions caused by the corona virus) we are really missing at the moment.
Prizes for the best master’s theses
Six students have been awarded prizes of 250 Euros each by the city of Freising for having the best Master’s theses in their respective fields of study for the academic year 2019/2020. Mayor Eschenbacher makes this years awards in a video in which he congratulates the students for their outstanding work and pays “special tribute” to them for completing their work under pandemic-related restrictions.
The winners for the 2019/2020 academic year are: Clara Wagner (Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences), Marie-Louise Kowollick (Biosciences), Deborah Kracheletz (Brewing and Food Technology), Franziska Baumann (Nutritional Sciences), Benjamin Franklin Meyer (Forest Sciences and Resource Management), and Fabian Sauter (Landscape Architecture and Landscape Planning).
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Susanne Neumann
TUM School of Life Sciences
Press and Public Relations