Steinfurt - "if you have already learned something by Monday morning, the week is off to a good start", exclaims Anette Schavan. She looks curiously at the yellow pill, which is lying in the hand of Prof. Dr. Thomas Jüstel. "This is our story" says Jüstel, after explaining how to convert the white light of LEDs into a warm-white color with these materials - a huge future market with more than 20 billion lights sold anually. "Good story" responds the Federal Minister of Research, which, probably because of the election campaign, was followed by an invitation from the Bundestag delegate Jens Spahn to the Steinfurt campus of the Münster University of Applied Sciences.
Prof. Dr. Mittmann explains to Schavan how fluorescent nanoparticles can be used to mark tumour cells in the colon and thus open the way to minimally invasive keyhole surgery. The fact that her ministry promotes the poject with 500,000 euros is, of course, just right. "A good example of research money well spent."
The decan of engineering physics, Prof. Dr. Thomas Rose, demonstrates to the prominent visitor how well the research funding is being invested in the Steinfurt campus. The university took in 10 million euros from third-party sources, 70% of which was earned by the natural sciences in Steinfurt. This makes the comparison with other universities simple - in terms of the number of professors, for example, the Faculty of Chemistry is nationwide number one. Rose is also proud of the 40 current doctoral students, which is not a matter of course for a university applied sciences. After 45 minutes it continues. But before before that, the local CDU member, Doris Gremplinski, succeeds in eliciting a promise from the minister: to make sure that the student grant applications of German students in The Netherlands are processed more quickly.