HZB is member of the IGAFA initiative in Adlershof
What are the activities of IGAFA?
Since September 2020, the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin is again a member of IGAFA - the Initiative of Non-University Research Institutions in Adlershof. Prof. Dr. Jan Lüning, scientific director of the HZB, was elected to the association's board.
The tasks of IGAFA include the promotion of interdisciplinary cooperation, the promoting of scientific content through publications and events and the care of international guests in two meeting centers (see figure).
In addition, IGAFA sees itself as an interface between research and the public interested in science. For this reason, IGAFA participates, for example, in the Adlershof Dissertation Prize, the Long Night of Sciences, or supervises the Adlershof Ladies Network.
- Joint power instead of duplicate structures:Berlin’s research community is further advancing its research excellence by establishing a high-performance, cross-institutional infrastructure for data and AI. With a joint agreement signed on 18 September 2026, the Berlin University Alliance (BUA), the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) are paving the way for a joint data science and AI centre in Berlin-Dahlem and Adlershof.
- New technique could make MRI more preciseA team of researchers at the University of Stuttgart and HZB has developed a new method that could make MRI even more precise by eliminating “dead time,” a key limiting factor in the measurement process, thereby enabling the detection of signals that are lost using conventional methods. This method opens up new possibilities for medical diagnostics and non-destructive materials testing. The research team presents the new approach in Science Advances.
- New method shows how molecular switches are influenced by their neighborsResearchers at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Helmholtz Centre Berlin (HZB) have, for the first time, been able to directly observe how the environment surrounding a molecular switch influences its electronic structure. Molecular switches are molecules that can be switched between two states by external influences such as changes in temperature—similar to a switch with the positions »On« and »Off«. Such molecules are being investigated as potential building blocks for future data storage devices or sensor materials. Using magnetic-field-dependent terahertz spectroscopy, the researchers have now, for the first time, been able to distinguish whether neighbouring molecules in a material are in the same or different states. The results have been published in the journal »Angewandte Chemie International Edition«.