During a high-level delegation visit to Freiburg, the University of Freiburg and Nagoya University in Japan have further expanded their long-standing collaboration as Enhanced Partners. Two milestones were celebrated on this occasion: Prof. Dr Kerstin Krieglstein, Rector at the University of Freiburg, and Prof. Dr Naoshi Sugiyama, President of Nagoya University, signed the Joint Doctoral Programme and marked the opening of the Nagoya University Global Campus as a permanently staffed representative office in Freiburg. The celebrations were attended by representatives from both universities, the Japanese Embassy in Germany and the Japanese Consulate General in Munich. Sugiyama was also involved in the Excellence review, during which the University of Freiburg welcomed international experts to the campus as part of the competition for the title of University of Excellence.
“Today’s signing of the Joint Doctoral Programme and the opening of the Global Campus send a strong signal of our reliable and active partnership with Nagoya University,” says Krieglstein. “With the Joint Doctoral Programme, we are creating a clear pathway for joint PhDs and fostering talent working at the intersections of our research fields. The Nagoya University Global Campus in Freiburg will act as a catalyst in this regard: it makes exchange faster, easier and more visible while generating momentum that extends into research, teaching and knowledge transfer.”
Sugiyama emphasised the particular value of long-term cooperation: “Today marks a truly historic occasion for our two universities as we renew the Joint Degree Programme in Medical Science and inaugurate the Nagoya University Global Campus at the University of Freiburg. These initiatives are our promise that the most curious students and the most ambitious researchers from Nagoya and Freiburg will continue to belong to a single, shared academic community.”
Celebrating the launch of two key projects
Through the Joint Doctoral Programme, both universities are establishing a structured, internationally recognised programme for early-career researchers – initially in the life sciences and medicine. Among other things, it enables doctoral candidates to undertake dual-supervised PhD projects and extended research stays at the partner university, thereby strengthening both mobility between Nagoya and Freiburg and joint research in the long term. At the University of Freiburg, the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Biology are involved.
With the Nagoya University Global Campus, located in FRIAS, the partnership with Nagoya will be permanently visible on campus. Nagoya University has maintained a representative office in Freiburg since 2010, which will reopen its doors as a permanently staffed contact point. Among other things, it aims to expand short-term stays for students and doctoral candidates, facilitate visiting stays for researchers from both sides, and accelerate networking in strategic areas of research.
A long-standing partnership
The University of Freiburg and Nagoya University are research-intensive comprehensive universities of comparable size. Academic links have existed since the 1950s while the two universities have been connected through a partnership at university level since 2001; in 2023, the cooperation was elevated to the status of an Enhanced Partnership and now encompasses, in particular, collaboration and potential in the life and natural sciences, environmental and sustainability sciences, as well as in the social sciences and humanities.
