General Assembly elects molecular biologist Axel A. Brakhage and engineering scientist Hans Hasse to the DFG Executive Committee for another four years

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The General Assembly of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) has re-elected Vice Presidents Professor Dr. Axel A. Brakhage and Professor Dr.-Ing. Hans Hasse for a second term of office. At the DFG annual meeting in Potsdam on Wednesday, 3 July 2024, they were appointed to the governing body of Germany’s largest research funding organisation and central self-governing organisation for science and the humanities for another four years.

Axel A. Brakhage holds the Chair of Microbiology and Molecular Biology at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and is Scientific Director of the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI). His research focuses on the infection biology of human-pathogenic fungi, microbial communication and the search for microbial agents, as well as the development of antibiotics. Brakhage was spokesperson for a graduate school funded under the Excellence Initiative and from 2019 to 2023 founding spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence “Balance of the Microverse”, of which he has been a member ever since. He is currently the spokesperson for the CRC/Transregio “Pathogenic Fungi and their Human Host: Networks of Interaction” (FungiNet). 

During his first term as DFG Vice President, Brakhage chaired the DFG Senate Commission on Genetic Research and was involved in the Joint Committee of the Sino-German Center for Research Promotion (SGC) in Beijing, an institution that is jointly funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the DFG. He was also a member of the DFG Sustainability Commission, which is concerned with anchoring sustainability considerations in the DFG’s funding activities.

Hans Hasse heads the Chair of Thermodynamics at the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU). He was a member of the DFG Senate from 2016 to 2020 and a member of the “Process Engineering, Technical Chemistry” review board from 2008 to 2016, of which he was spokesperson from 2012 to 2016. He has also acted as spokesperson for numerous DFG-funded collaborative projects, including three Collaborative Research Centres. Most recently, up until 2023, he was spokesperson for the Collaborative Research Centre “Microscale Morphology of Component Surfaces (MICOS)”. 

During his first term as DFG Vice President, Hasse was particularly active in promoting universities of applied sciences (UAS) and was involved in the implementation of funding measures in this area such as the Research Impulses funding programme. Hasse was also involved in the DFG Sustainability Commission and the Senate Ad Hoc Working Group on the Digital Turn.

In addition to DFG President Professor Dr. Katja Becker and the re-elected Vice Presidents Brakhage and Hasse, the DFG Executive Committee includes the lawyer Professor Dr. Marietta Auer, the art historian Professor Dr. Johannes Grave, the physicist Professor Dr. Karin Jacobs, the sociologist Professor Dr. Matthias Koenig, the computer scientist Professor Dr. Kerstin Schill, the chemist Professor Dr. Peter H. Seeberger and the medical scientist Professor Dr. Britta Siegmund. The President of Stifterverband is a member of the Executive Committee in an advisory capacity by virtue of their office. DFG Secretary General Dr. Heide Ahrens likewise participates in the meetings of the Executive Committee in an advisory capacity.

The Vice Presidents are elected by the General Assembly for a maximum of two terms of office of four years each. They stand in for the President if she is unable to fulfil her duties. In addition, they are guest attendees at the meetings of the Senate and of the Joint Committee, the DFG’s highest scientific body and central decision-making body. 

Further information

For further information on DFG Executive Committee members, see: 

• www.dfg.de/en/dfg-profile/statutory-bodies/executive-committee

All press releases on the 2024 annual meeting are also to be found in a digital press kit at www.dfg.de/service/presse/jahresversammlung-2024, which is supplemented on an ongoing basis.