Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Gegen das Erdbeben tanzen

Published: February 16th
In: Dresdner Universitätsjournal
Subject: "Shake agaisnt the quake" Haiti benefit concert
English write up:
http://wheelercowperthwaite.blogspot.com/2010/02/dresden-rocks-for-haiti.html

(This portfolio, February 9th)

Tanzen und Feiern bei einem Benefizkonzert für die Haiti-Nothilfe

Am 4. Februar kamen etwa fünfhundert Menschen in den »Bärenzwinger«, um bei »shake against the quake« Geld fur die Haiti-Nothilfe einzunehmen und dann zu spenden.
»Das war sehr gut«, freute sich Dr. TorstenKönig, ein Mitarbeiter des Instituts für Romanistik-Studien der TU Dresden. »Und es war noch besser als erwartet.« König sagte, dass er weniger Gäste, TUDMitarbeiter und Studenten, erwartet hatte. »Schließlich ist Prüfungszeit«, sagte er.
Dieses gut besuchte Benefizkonzert erbrachte 3077 Euro. Das Geld geht zugunsten der arche noVa, eine Dresdner Hilfsorganisation, sagte Dr. König. Haiti ist ein frankophones Land, dem sich das Institut für Romanistik nahe fühlt und, und deswegen ist man besonders gern bereit, zu helfen. König startete mit den Vorbereitungen am 18. Januar, per E-Mail suchte er Mitstreiter. Drei Tage später trafen sich die so zueinander gefundenen Organisatoren, zwei Wochen nach diesem Treffen fand bereits das Konzert statt. »Alles ging relativ leicht«, sagte er. Die Studenten fanden Gruppen und Künstler, die gern und ohne Bezahlung mitmachten.

»Stilbruch«, eine Akustikrock Band, war die erste Gruppe auf der Bühne, die vor dem großen Publikum zu spielen begann. Prof. Silke Jansen sprach anschließend über Land und Leute von Haiti. Dann kam die Funk’n’Soul Band »Staircase Club«, die so laut spielte, dass man diese Musik in seinen Knochen fühlen konnte.

Die Brass Band Banda Comunale, Kelvin Kalvus, Clemens und Theresa, Georg Schuman, GorBeats, der Phil-Fak-Chor der TUD und DJ Subcadia waren auch dabei.


http://tu-dresden.de/die_tu_dresden/verwaltung/dezernat_5/sachgebiet_5_7/uj/bilder/pdf2010/UJ03-10.pdf

(PDF) Or,

http://tu-dresden.de/die_tu_dresden/verwaltung/dezernat_5/sachgebiet_5_7/uj/pdf

2010 -- Issue 03


Monday, February 15, 2010

Menschenkette am 13. Februar 2010 war großer Erfolg

February 15th, 2010

Written with Steffi Eckold

In Original German

Published online: Feb. 15th, 2010

Published in print: March 2, 2010 in the Dresdner Universitätsjournal

Subject: Human chain formed in protest to Nazi demonstrations on the anniversary of the firebombing of Dresden.

Dresdens Oberbürgermeisterin Helma Orosz sprach am 13. Februar 2010 anlässlich des 65. Jahrestages der Bombardierung Dresdens deutliche Worte: Dresden müsse an dem Tag "zu einer Festung gegen Intoleranz und Dummheit werden". Eine Menschenkette von Postplatz über den Rathausplatz bis hin zur Synagoge solle Dresdens Innenstadt symbolisch vor einem Neonazi-Aufmarsch schützen. Auch 2010 wollten Rechtsradikale den Tag des Gedenkens an die Zerstörung Dresdens und die zahlreichen Opfer missbrauchen.

Der Rektor der TU Dresden, Prof. Hermann Kokenge, hatte die Menschenkette angemeldet, die dann ein eindrucksvolles Zeichen in die Welt schickte. Über 10 000 Bürger - unter ihnen zahlreiche TUD-Mitarbeiter und -Studenten - beteiligten sich an der Gedenkaktion. Die Kette wurde schließlich doppelt so lang wie geplant. Sie reichte vom Postplatz über den Rathausplatz und die Synagoge, die mehrfach umschlungen wurde, weiter über die Brühlsche Terrasse und den Schlossplatz bis hin zur Frauenkirche. Symbolisch wurde so der gesamte Dresdner Innenstadtkern geschützt. Nachdem die Kette geschlossen war, läuteten für zehn Minuten die Kirchen der Dresdner Innenstadt.

Erstmals gelang es 2010, einen Aufmarsch der Neonazis in die Dresdner Innenstadt zu verhindern. Rund 5000 Rechtsradikale - 3000 weniger als erwartet und 1000 weniger als im Vorjahr - waren nach Dresden gekommen, konnten jedoch aufgrund zahlreicher Gegendemonstrationen bereits auf der Neustädter Elbseite ihren geplanten Marsch nicht beginnen.

Online:

http://tu-dresden.de/aktuelles/news/menschenkette132/newsarticle_view

Uni-Journal:

http://tu-dresden.de/die_tu_dresden/verwaltung/dezernat_5/sachgebiet_5_7/uj/bilder/pdf2010/UJ04-10.pdf

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Dresden rocks for Haiti

Note: unpublished

A packed audience shook the Bärenzwinger to its arch Thursday night (Feb. 4, 2010) and raised over 3,000 euros for relief efforts in Haiti in the process.

“It was better than we expected,” Dr. Torsten König , a Romance Studies professor who helped organize the fundraiser, said. He estimated around 500 attendees.

The money was raised for arche noVa, a Dresden-based international aid organization.

König said he was surprised by the turnout: “It’s finals time.”

He sent an email on the 18th of January appealing to the students and faculty of the Romance Studies program for help to organize a concert to raise funds for Haiti. “They speak French,” he said, expressing a sort of kinship between the French speakers in the Romance Studies and the French-speaking country of Haiti.

The students and faculty met on the following Thursday for the first and last time: they continued to organize the event, find bands, print flyers and get the word out all by email, phone and social networking. “An initiative from under,” he said. And all in two weeks.

The first band, Stilbruch, took the stage at 7:40, forty minutes after the presumed start-time. Stilbruch, an acoustic rock band from Dresden, played to a half-filled room until the singer asked the audience to move up and let in the people behind. After some shuffling, the room was once again packed.

At the midway point in the session the singer/bassist engaged the audience and tried to initiate hand clapping. The hand clapping quickly died. After the band played for just under an hour, the fiddle player, singer/bassist and drum player took bows and walked off the stage, waiting for the room to clear.

A presentation on Haiti came next, lasting for close to an hour and a half. After the presentation, a large portion of the attendees moved back into the warm Zwinger.

A Funk ‘n Soul band, named Staircase Club took the stage and played a foot-thumping Superstition. However, the packed audience wasn’t moved seemingly moved. The set moved on to “Get on the bus.” The band seemed warmed up and the first of the band’s rollicking solos appealed to the emotions of the audience. Although the audience still wasn’t moving, the band was playing loud, was playing hard, was not projecting music into ears but into bones.

Elisa Bartling, the singer, jumped into the third song without preamble, pacing her small piece of the stage. Even though the band was warmed up by the second song, it wasn’t until the third that the audience seemed to come to life, at least a little. Movement did occur in the crowd, although it wasn’t the dancing of later on in the session.

In the fifth song, the bass, a tall, almost goofy, aloof Jens Bellmann stayed in his spot next to the drummer, behind the trombone and trumpet and rocked the audience. Seemingly straight out of Minnesota, he played with a grin and reveled in his playing.

The drummer, Christian Lampe, rocked out with a drum solo in the sixth song, although the audience wasn’t really rocking along. He rocked his own little world, separate from the Haiti benefit concert, separate from his band.

By the end of the last song, the floor had thinned out but the people were dancing to music. The only thing amazing is that they weren’t dancing before.


Friday, February 5, 2010

TU Dresden professor wins highest German science research award

Note: this is press release originally written in German that I translated to English. Not all of this translation is original: half of the text was previously translated.


Dresden
December 3rd, 2009

The highest German research prize was given to TU Dresden biophysics professor Petra Schwille.

The Joint Committee of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) announced the winners today of the 2010 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.

One of the ten awards went to Professor Petra Schwille of the Biotechnology Center (BIOTEC) of the TU Dresden.

The prize brings with it 2.5 million Euros and the prestige of winning Germany’s highest science award. The winner may use the money over seven years to pursue her own scientific agenda, no strings attached.

The TU Dresden rector’s first reaction was of delight: “I gave Petra Schwille my sincere congratulations; I was so thrilled to hear about her achievement. This is proof for us that, at our university, brilliant scientists both teach and research, providing an example to inspire other leading scientists.”

Professor Michael Brand, Director of Biotec, said he saw in this commendation a affirmation of effective recruiting policies in the biotechnology field. “Petra’s award demonstrates that we at the TU Dresden have positive accomplishments, can attract the best minds to Dresden, and Petra Schwille showed that a gain in the field of biophysics can be won.”


Petra Schwille's work has considerably advanced both the development of fluorescence spectroscopy and its application to questions in cellular biology. Ever since she received her doctoral degree, Schwille has been working on the development of fluorescence spectroscopic methods, with which the function of individual protein molecules can be characterized. Most significantly, she contributed to the development and optimization of fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS), one of the most elegant, non-invasive methods of recording molecular processes in biological systems. Through a combination of FCS and two-photon excitation, Petra Schwille achieved spectacular insights into cellular mechanisms. In her more recent work, she has tried to establish the FCS method in developmental biology and has already managed to use it in living model organisms such as the zebrafish and the roundworm. Petra Schwille also uses the FCS method to research the interactions between proteins and lipids, for which she has gained international recognition.

Schwille was born on January 25th, 1968 in the town of Sindelfingen. After her Abitur, she studied physics and philosophy at the University of Göttingen. After studying physics and philosophy, she worked with the Nobel Prize recipient Manfred Eigen in Göttingen and received her doctoral degree in Braunschweig. As a postdoctoral researcher she went to Göttingen and to Cornell University. She then returned to Göttingen to the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, where she set up her own independent junior research group. In 2002 she was appointed to chair Biophysics at the Dresden University of Technology.

This is not the first time Schwille’s work has been recognized. She won, in 2003, the “Young Investigator Award for Biotechnology,” from the Peter and Traudl Engelhorn Foundation and the 2004 Phillip Morris research prize. In 2005, she was appointed as a Fellow at the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. She became a mother for the third time on November 9th, 2009.

Original German:
http://tu-dresden.de/aktuelles/newsarchiv/2009/12/schwille/newsarticle_view
Translated:
http://tu-dresden.de/aktuelles/newsarchiv/2009/12/schwille/newsarticle_view

TU Dresden enters 2nd phase of Excellence Initiative

Note: this is press release originally written in German that I translated to English.


The Excellence Initiative, founded by the German federal and state governments, enters its second phase at the TU Dresden this year.

“Built on past achievements, the TU Dresden will foster its graduate schools, excellence clusters and institutional strategies to rise above the competition as an Elite University,” said the Rector of the TU Dresden, Professor Hermann Kokenge, in a press conference.

An important part of the university’s application for the Excellence Initiative was the creation of the Science and Culture Alliance DRESDEN-concept. Founded in 2009, the Alliance elected four senior partners to form four Scientific Area Committees, SAC, reflecting TU Dresden’s strengths: biomedicine/bioengineering, information technology/microelectronics, material/energy efficiency, culture and knowledge. . Additionally, an administrative taskforce regularly meets on issues such as research infrastructure, including IT platforms and research equipment.
Another part of TUD’s Excellence Initiative strategy is the creation of four new departments to manage the university’s fourteen faculties. The new structuring aims to make the university, its research and its management faster, more efficient and more productive.
“The new university organization combines successful corporate structures with the special requirements of a multi-discipline university,” Kokenge said. “We want to coordinate university-wide issues to a better and consistently high standard.”
The university’s 14 faculties will remain semi-autonomous but will be managed by and grouped under four new departments.

The point and strategy of the restructuring is clear. “We’re clearing up the last details,” Kokenge said. “We’ll turn the rudder, in the first half of 2010, in the new direction. Now it’s necessary that all the members of the university work together so that we all can share the benefits of these changes.”

The rector greeted the announcement of further financial backing for the Excellence Initiative, made by the Saxon Minister of Science and Art, Professor Sabine von Schorlemer. The funding will come by means of a Landesfonds, a fund financed by Saxony.
“One reason we didn’t get the Elite University title in the first phase of the Excellence Initiative was, in my opinion, Saxony's reserved handling of the situation,” Kokenge said. The new fund should make it possible for the university to recruit, in competition with other universities on international level, the best faculty members.

The rector was critical of any further job cuts. “We’ve been driving at the absolute limit for years,” he said. The state should now take the chance to develop the student-to-faculty ratio to an acceptable level. “Those who would cut back on education funding to save money put the future of the country at risk.”

Kokenge indicated that the increase in next winter’s enrollments would be accompanied by faculty reductions. “The number of students enrolling has increased by 12,000 since 1998 and at the same time we’ve lost 408 jobs,” he said.
Dresden placed 13th out of 18 universities in a student-to-professor comparison, with a ratio of 72.5 students per professor.

Original German:
http://tu-dresden.de/aktuelles/newsarchiv/2010/1/pk_exzellenz/newsarticle_view
Translated article:
http://tu-dresden.de/aktuelles/newsarchiv/2010/1/pk_exzellenz/newsarticle_view
On the News page:
http://tu-dresden.de/en/news/excellence2010/newsarticle_view