Inhalt
Bavaria - A State with a Future
The Future Made in Bavaria
Bavaria is facing the future. The precondition for economic success and a high standard of living in the 21st century is to be at the forefront of research and development. That is why science and research are a top priority in Bavaria. More research is conducted here than in most other places in the world.
As regards expenditure for research and development, Bavaria occupies a leading position both nationally and internationally. The state alone invests about 3 billion Euros annually in science and research. And these investments pay off. More than every fourth patent that is registered in Germany comes from Bavaria. A total of more than 100,000 people work as researchers and scientists in universities, in other research institutes and in firms in Bavaria, so that the future will continue to take place in Bavaria.
The research landscape in Bavaria is a varied and extensive one. Well-equipped universities and highly-specialised research centres offer scientists optimum conditions for research. For example, the twelve Max Planck Institutes in Bavaria, which provide valuable results in fields ranging from biochemistry through plasma physics to neurobiology. Or one of the nine Fraunhofer Institutes for applied research in Bavaria, which work on technological innovation.
Or the Helmholtz Research Centre for the Environment and Health in Neuherberg, which conducts research into the protection of our natural surroundings. The Bavarian universities and other institutions of higher education provide important impulses for innovation and progress. The Bavarian universities are among those with the best research facilities in Germany and attract top academics. In the Einstein year 2005 a further researcher from Bavaria joined the long list of Bavarian Nobel Prize winners: the physicist Professor Theodor Hänsch has been teaching and conducting research at the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich for twenty years.
From the Laboratory onto the Market
It often takes a long time before a new invention can be manufactured in series production. Bavaria wants to shorten this period and bring scientists and businessmen closer together by means of its Cluster Initiative. ‘Cluster' is the technical term for the close interlinking of research, development and production. It is above all knowledge-intensive sectors from the high-tech field that profit from these close links to the research centres and make use of their joint know-how, their competences and their resources. Take the medical/pharmaceutical cluster in Erlangen. 250 firms in the fields of medical technology and pharmaceutics have established themselves here in Europe's "Medical Valley" close to renowned research facilities, so that the new inventions from Bavaria reach the production line in Bavaria, too.
Neutron source FRM II
The new research reactor FRM II was inaugurated in Garching, just outside Munich, in 2004. This means that one of the most powerful neutron sources in the world is available for scientific research and technological development in Bavaria. Nowadays neutron research is indispensable in almost all natural sciences and provides valuable results for medicine, the biosciences, material research and microelectronics.
Expenditure on research and development as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP)
| Bavaria | 3.0% |
| Federal Republic | 2.5% |
Percentage of employees in research and development in the German economy
| Bavaria | 25.2% |
| Baden-Württemberg | 23.6% |
| North-Rhine-Westphalia | 14.2% |
Patents applied for in 2005
| Bavaria | 13,688 |
| Baden-Württemberg | 12,828 |
| Germany | 48,367 |
