International Commission
The International Commission acts as a guarantee that our funding programs operate to an excellent academic standard. The Commission, which is composed of pre-eminent figures, advises the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts in setting up and evaluating Elite Graduate Programs, International Doctorate Programs and Junior Research Groups under the umbrella of the Elite Network of Bavaria.
The Commission: independent and academic-led
The International Commission oversees the work of the Elite Network of Bavaria with regard to its offerings and methodology. By pooling the deep academic expertise of its members, who specialize in a broad range of disciplines, the Commission makes a key contribution to quality assurance.
The International Commission’s role begins with selecting the best applications to set up Elite Graduate Programs, International Doctorate Programs and Junior Research Groups. Applications are reviewed and selected in a multi-stage process. In addition, the International Commission engages in the evaluation of ongoing programs and provides crucial impetus for the future development of the Elite Network of Bavaria’s overall concept.
In addition, the International Commission has also been accompanying the selection process in the new funding program ”Distinguished Professorship“ since 2021. This program was established as part of Bavaria's High-Tech Agenda. The aim of the Distinguished Professorship Programme (DPP) is to support Bavarian universities in attracting particularly outstanding researchers to Bavaria as a center of science and research by offering them internationally competitive top conditions.
Chair
| Prof. Peter Strohschneider (Chair since 2014) | former President of the German Research Foundation (DFG) |
Commission members
| Prof. Frank Allgöwer (Member since 2022) | Institute for Systems Theory and Automatic Control, University of Stuttgart |
| Prof. Wolf-Tilo Balke (Member since 2019) | Institute for Information Systems, Technische Universität Braunschweig |
| Prof. Thomas Bernauer (Member since 2019) | Institute of Science, Technology and Policy, ETH Zürich |
| Prof. Michael Drmota (Member since 2018) | Institute of Discrete Mathematics and Geometry, Technische Universität Wien |
| Prof. Chinwe Ifejika Speranza (Member since 2022) | Institute of Geography, University of Bern |
| Prof. Jürgen Knoblich (Member since 2021) | Medical University of Vienna; Austrian Academy of Sciences |
| Prof. Heike Krieger (Member since 2019) | Institute for International Law, European Law and Comparative Public Law, Freie Universität Berlin |
| Prof. Dorothea Kübler (Member since 2021) | Berlin Social Science Center |
| Prof. Klaus Lieb (Member since 2020) | Director of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Mainz |
| Prof. Thsibe K. Lindhorst (Member since 2019) | former President of the Society of German Chemists Otto Diels Institute for Organic Chemistry, Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel |
| Prof. Steffen Martus (Member since 2019) | Institute of German Literature, Humboldt-Universität Berlin |
| Prof. Marie Louise Nosch (Member since 2021) | Saxo-Institute, University of Copenhagen |
| Prof. Erich Schröger (Member since 2019) | Institute of Psychology, University of Leipzig |
| Prof. Ulrike Woggon (Member since 2023) | Institute of Optics and Atomic Physics, Technische Universität Berlin |
Chair
| Prof. Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker (Chair up to 2014) | Secretary General of the Human Frontier Science Program, Strasbourg, France |
| Prof. Knut Urban (Chair from 2017 to 2019) | Senior Professor of the Jülich Aachen Research Alliance Former Director of the Ernst Ruska-Centre |
Commission members
| Prof. Helmut Altner (Member until 2014) | Former President of the German Academic Sponsorship Program and former Rector of the University of Regensburg |
| Prof. Uwe Clausen (Member until 2022) | Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics, Dortmund |
| Prof. Guido Dehnhardt (Member until 2018) | Chair of Sensory and Cognitive Ecology Institute for Biosciences, University of Rostock |
| Prof. Nina Dethloff (Member until 2019) | Director of the Institute of German, European and International Family Law Chair of Private Law, International Private Law, Comparative Law and European Private Law at the University of Bonn |
| Dr Hermann Franz (Member until 2014 (†)) | Former member of the Supervisory Board of Siemens AG |
| Prof. Julia Fischer (Member until 2016) | Chair of Cognitive Ethology at the University of Göttingen Head of the Cognitive Ethology Research Group at the German Primate Center, Göttingen |
| Prof. Erika Fischer-Lichte (Member until 2017) | Institute for Theatre Studies, FU Berlin |
| Prof. Herbert Gleiter (Member until 2014) | Former Managing Director of the Institute for Nanotechnology at the Karlsruhe Research Center |
| Prof. Katerina Harvati-Papatheodorou (Member until 2015) | Chair of Paleoanthropology at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen Director of the Paleoanthropology working group, Department of Geoscience, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen |
| Prof. Ralf Hiptmair (Member until 2018) | Seminar for Applied Mathematics, ETH Zürich, Switzerland |
| Prof. Anne-Barbara Ischinger (Member until 2005) | Former Vice President of the Humboldt University of Berlin |
| Prof. Dr. Regine Kahmann (Member until 2010) | Director of the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Marburg |
| Prof. Max Kaase (Member until 2014) | Former Vice President of the International University Bremen |
| Prof. Walter Kröll (Member until 2003) | Former President of the Helmholtz Association |
| Prof. Alfred Kieser (Member until 2019) | Professor emeritus of the University of Mannheim Former Vice President and Dean of the Zeppelin University Graduate School |
| Prof. Reinhold Kliegl (Member until 2019) | Chair of Psychology at the University of Potsdam |
| Prof. Karl-Heinz Kohl (Member until 2021) | Former President of the Frobenius-Institute for Research in Cultural Anthropology, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt |
| Prof. Frauke Kraas (Member until 2022) | Institute of Geography, University of Cologne |
| Prof. Gerhard Krüger (Member until 2004) | Former President of the Gesellschaft für Informatik |
| Prof. Olaf Kübler (Member until 2005) | Former President of ETH Zürich |
| Prof. Christine Mannhalter (Member until 2018) | Clinical Institute of Medical and Chemical Laboratory Diagnostics, Medical University of Vienna; Former Vice President of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) |
| Prof. Kurt Mehlhorn (Member until 2006) | Saarland University |
| Prof. Fritz Melchers (Member until 2014) | Former Director of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Campus Charité Mitte |
| Prof. Volker Mosbrugger (Member until 2014) | Director of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Frankfurt am Main |
| Prof. Ernst Osterkamp (Member until 2019) | Chair of German Literature, Department of German Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin Former President of the German Academy for Language and Literature |
| Prof. Ursula Peters (Member until 2014) | Institute of German Language and Literature, University of Cologne; former Vice President of the DFG |
| Prof. Daniela Pfannkuche (Member until 2023) | Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Hamburg |
| Prof. Ype H. Poortinga (Member until 2014) | Former President of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP); Tilburg University, Netherlands |
| Prof. Sandra Richter (Member until 2011) | Department of Modern German Literature I and II, University of Stuttgart |
| Prof. Andrea Schenker-Wicki (Member until 2021) | President of the University of Basel |
| Prof. Bernd Scholz-Reiter (Member until 2019) | Rector of the University of Bremen Chair of Planning and Control of Production Engineering Systems, Department of Production Engineering, University of Bremen |
| Prof. Ferdi Schüth (Member until 2014) | Director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim an der Ruhr Vice President of the DFG |
| Prof. Helmut Schwarz (Member until 2019) | President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Chair of Organic Chemistry,TU Berlin |
| Prof. Hans Vorländer (Member until 2019) | Chair of Political Theory and the History of Political Thought, TU Dresden |
| Prof. Franz W. Wagner (Member until 2014) | Former Chair of Business Administration, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen |
| Prof. Dorothea Wagner (Member until 2019) | Chair of Algorithmics I, Institute of Theoretical Informatics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) |
| Prof. Ellen Zechner (Member until 2021) | Institute of Molecular Biosciences, University of Graz |
| Prof. Anton Zeilinger (Member until 2005) | Chair of the Institute for Experimental Physics, University of Vienna |
| Prof. Frauke Zipp (Member until 2018) | Director of the Department of Neurology, University Medical Center of the University of Mainz Professor of Neurology |