Lower Saxony's Science Minister Falko Mohrs on a delegation trip to Scotland
European Centre for Advanced Studies
2024-06-27 "Alongside Israel, Scotland is one of the two most important cooperation partners for science in Lower Saxony and the European Centre for Advanced Studies (ECAS) has a fundamentally important role to play in coordinating this partnership," said Lower Saxony's Science Minister Falko Mohrs at this year's Lower Saxony - Scotland Joint Forum at Leuphana. Shortly beforehand, a high-ranking delegation from Lower Saxony had visited Scotland to talk to various universities and Universities Scotland, the association of Scottish colleges and universities, about expanding the cooperation.
The delegation, which included Science Minister Falko Mohrs and the science policy spokespersons of the SPD parliamentary group, Dr Silke Lesemann, the CDU parliamentary group, Cindy Lutz, and the Greens, Pippa Schneider, from the Lower Saxony state parliament, as well as five presidents and six vice presidents of universities and colleges in Lower Saxony, also worked very specifically on expanding Lower Saxony-Scotland relations. o Memoranda of Understanding were signed between the University of Strathclyde and Leibnitz University Hannover, Hannover Medical School and the Centre for Virus Research at the University of Glasgow as well as the Lower Saxony Conference of Higher Education Institutions and Universities Scotland. In the future, joint projects in the areas of energy (transition) & green hydrogen, transformation of mobility, education, security policy and the natural sciences are to be tackled.
The Scottish interlocutors criticised the outcome of the Brexit referendum and emphasised the great importance of the European Union for the Scottish science sector. Without exception, the delegation spoke with the front row of the respective institutions. In addition to the dialogue with Universities Scotland, there were talks with the University of Edinburgh, the University of Glasgow, the University of Strathclyde, the University of Stirling and the Royal Society of Edinburgh as well as the Scottish Minister for Foreign Affairs and Culture. In both scientific regions, Lower Saxony and Scotland, these are strong research organisations that are internationally competitive. By joining forces, joint third-party funded projects for prestigious funding programmes such as the ERC, DFG or UKRI are to be created.