(09.01.20) In early December, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) organised an evening event at the Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow with recipient of the Communicator Award and Leibniz Prize Prof. Dr. Onur Güntürkün. The biopsychologist from the Ruhr University of Bochum (RUB) attracted an audience of around 100 people from a number of research institutions in Moscow as well as representatives of German research organisations based there to the DFG Leibniz Lecture entitled “Cognition without a Cortex”.

The lecture was preceded by a roundtable discussion in the rector’s office of the university. Besides Leibniz prizewinner Güntürkün, other event participants included HSE Vice-Rector Prostakov, RUB Vice-Rector Kornelia Freitag and representatives of the DFG, the German embassy in Moscow and the University Alliance Ruhr (UA Ruhr). RUB intends to expand on the university partnership established in recent years with HSE and sees a great deal of potential for cooperation in the research work of Onur Güntürkün. The Permanent Representative of the German Ambassador, Envoy Beate Grzeski, welcomed the joint initiative of the large German delegation as an excellent event of the ongoing German-Russian Year of University Cooperation and Research 2018-2020.

In her welcome speech at the opening of the lecture, Grzeski emphasised the important role that the format of the DFG Leibniz Lectures now plays in the dialogue between Germany and Russia regarding specific subjects and science policy. The DFG organises Leibniz Lectures, delivered by recipients of Germany’s most important research prize, at worldwide locations where it has its own international representations. The lectures present the latest topics of top-level research in Germany and opportunities for bilateral cooperation. Leibniz Lectures are greatly valued abroad as an ‘ambassador’ of German research and continually engender new research cooperations.

According to Dr. Jörn Achterberg, Director of International Affairs at the DFG, it was the ninth time that the DFG's Moscow office had organised a Leibniz Lecture in Russia since 2012. The responsible specialist Dr. Julia Engel (Humanities Centre for Advances Studies) also travelled to Moscow from the Head Office in Bonn in order to strengthen ties with the Russian researchers. Besides the DFG Leibniz Lecture, the itinerary also included a roundtable discussion at the Russian Academy of Sciences and a meeting with its President, Prof. Dr. Aleksandr Sergeev, as well as the German-Russian Science Forum “Brain Science and the Next Generation of Artificial Intelligence” at Lomonosov University, which was organised by the German House for Research and Innovation (DWIH) in Moscow.

Onur Güntürkün is an established researcher in the field of neurobiology. His fundamental objective is to understand how perception, thought and action arise in the brain. In 2013, Professor Güntürkün received the DFG’s Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in recognition of his scientific achievements and the Communicator Award from the DFG and Donor’s Association in 2014 for conveying his research findings to the public in an exemplary manner. In Moscow, he delivered a lecture on the cognitive abilities of ravens and parrots, which have far smaller brains than apes but have exceptional skills in the area of perception. For example, crows can assemble complex tools and magpies can recognise themselves in a mirror. Despite the differing brain structures in birds and mammals, it appears that they have formed comparable neural mechanisms in the course of evolution. Güntürkün claims that these similarities do not stem from a shared heritage, but rather that they developed in a similar way in both animal groups in the course of evolution. Onur Güntürkün also recorded four short lectures for the Russian online platform “Postnauka” at the DFG’s Moscow office.

The host university of the Leibniz Lecture, the Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow, was founded as a reform university in 1992 along the lines of the London School of Economics (LSE) and will be developed over the next few years to attain the status of a full university. It is part of the select group of national research universities in Russia and is the only one of the 40 leading higher education institutions in the country with a strong profile in economics and social sciences. Approximately 44,000 students are matriculated at four locations in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgrorod and Perm. There are international collaborations with many German universities. The DFG has been funding some of the research projects for a long time. The HSE is the organiser of the annual April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development, the most important academic platform for the social, economic and academic modernisation of Russia, at which DFG President Peter Strohschneider gave a talk in 2016.

Further Information

• Handout
• Videolectures of Professor Güntürkün
• UA Ruhr: Why Onur Güntürkun was in Moscow
• HSE: Interview with Onur Güntürkün