The British-German Frontiers of Science Symposium is to be held for the fifth time this year. Around sixty outstanding young natural scientists from Britain and Germany will be meeting in Dorking from 21 to 24 March. This collaborative venture is organized by the Junge Akademie, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Royal Society with the aim of facilitating the dialogue on topical research issues, helping scientists to develop international networks, and encouraging cooperation between different disciplines.

“We regard the British-German Frontiers of Science Symposium as being an excellent opportunity to take our important collaboration with Great Britain to the next level. Science has to be both international and interdisciplinary. That is a maxim which we are keen to uphold at the Junge Akademie, particularly in the age of Brexit”, stresses Wolfram Pernice, a board member of the Junge Akademie and co-chair of the symposium’s organising committee. The symposium is the product of close collaboration between the three participating partners, which already have four successful events of this kind under their belts from recent years. “I like the interdisciplinary nature of the event. It can be enormously enriching for your own field to find out more about the approaches and methods used in other areas of research. I hope we will also have an opportunity to consider which research issues we will want to address in the future”, says Jonas Peters, a board member of the Junge Akademie and co-organiser of the symposium.

Four members of the Junge Akademie will contribute to the varied programme. Chemist Thomas Böttcher is one of the organisers of the session ‘From natural products to smart medicines’. Alongside colleagues from other institutions, Jonas Peters, a mathematician, is responsible for the session ‘Mathematics for Climate’. Wolfram Pernice, whose specialist field is physics and electrical engineering, is involved in the session ‘Quantum computing’. And Martin Dresler will contribute his expertise in the field of cognitive neuroscience to the session ‘Why do we sleep?’

The Junge Akademie was founded in 2000 as first academy for the new academic generation worldwide. The members of the Junge Akademie, young academics and artists from German-speaking countries, are dedicated to interdisciplinary discourse and are active at the interfaces between academia and society. The Junge Akademie is supported by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. The office is located in Berlin.

Contact Anne Rohloff Tel.: +49 (0) 30 203 70-563 presse@diejungeakademie.de