Climate researcher Niklas Boers works on optimizing climate models with the aim to improve predictions about extreme weather events and potential tipping points in the Earth system – out of a deep sense of responsibility for future generations.

What makes a life with science so special, and what framework conditions must be in place to make it possible for universities as our high-performance academic institutions to offer opportunities and fulfillment? A conversation between Enrico Schleiff, President of Goethe University Frankfurt, and the Secretary General of the Volkswagen Foundation, Georg Schütte – moderated by Christine Prußky.

Scholar of administration Tetiana Kovalova had to give up her home in Kharkiv – but not her research. She is now in Jena, working on a project to do with post-war reconciliation and conflict transformation. Her work is supported by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Diving into archives, tracing the migration of museum objects through time and contexts – this is how provenance researcher Claudia Andratschke describes her work. A portrait.

Stefanie Kroker works in the field of nanometrology, creating the tiniest structures and developing techniques to measure them as precisely as possible. Research on quantum computing could also benefit from this. A portrait.

Not only crises caused by political upheavals or famines continue to wreak havoc on societies and communities on the African continent. Gilbert Fokou, a social anthropologist from Cameroon, sees himself as a bridging interface between the people and decision-makers in politics. He is driven by a strong determination to help the very poor.