In 1964, UMass Amherst was invited by the University of Freiburg in Germany to establish an “Honors College,” marking the “beginning of a transatlantic communication” between the two universities. This new relationship, as reported in the spring 1966 issue of Massachusetts Alumnus, held “the exciting possibility” of “two universities hitherto strangers to each other and long separated by space and language barriers, communicating personally and directly with each other through their students and their faculty about crucial contemporary questions involving the Atlantic Community of Nations in their mortal and salutary relationships with each other and with other communities in the world—friendly, neutral, or hostile—this was the prospect.”
In 1966, UMass sent its first group of 13 undergraduate and 22 graduate students to study in Freiburg. The academic program spanned a variety of disciplines and included intensive German language study as well as instruction in government, history, and sociology. A similar program was established for University of Freiburg students to study at UMass Amherst.
In the decades following its inception, the initiative has persisted and expanded to include the reciprocal exchange of both faculty and students from the nine research universities in the German state of Baden-Württemberg (Freiburg, Heidelberg, Hohenheim, Karlsruhe [KIT], Konstanz, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Tübingen, and Ulm) and the University of Massachusetts campuses in Amherst, Boston, Lowell, and Dartmouth, as well as UMass Chan Medical School. The exchange’s original focus on humanities study has also broadened to include many diverse STEM fields. A thriving study abroad program is offered every year to undergraduates. Since 1966, UMass has sent approximately 1,400 students to study in Baden-Württemberg and has received well over a thousand students from its German counterparts.
It's part of our global strategy to find nodes around the world where we can build broad and deep partnerships with several different types of activities.
Kalpen Trivedi, vice provost for global affairs and director of the International Programs Office
“This exchange provides our students with an opportunity to study at some of the best universities in the world,” says Kalpen Trivedi, UMass Amherst’s vice provost for global affairs and director of the International Programs Office. “Our faculty have enjoyed hosting graduate students from Baden-Württemberg, some of whom return to complete PhDs at UMass. And organic research collaborations have also developed between faculty from both sides in various academic fields, particularly in the area of food science.”
The long-standing and multilateral nature of the engagement between the UMass and Baden-Württemberg universities allows for the fostering of new collaborations and opens doors for researchers to access new funding opportunities, according to Eric Wirth, manager of global partnerships at UMass Amherst. It also helps to burnish the university’s global reputation.
Added Martina Diesing, senior officer of international affairs at the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research and Arts: “The success of this longstanding partnership lies within its multilateral characteristics and the people on both sides who actively take continuous responsibility for this. In contrast to bilateral partnerships between the individual universities, the state-wide program connects all research universities in Massachusetts and in Baden-Württemberg with each other in a variety of ways. This in turn enriches the exchange on the level of students, who gain their first international experience in a nurturing environment; scientists, who are deepening their research on diverse fields; and also staff.”
This academic exchange also benefits the universities’ home states, says Wirth, noting that Baden-Württemberg is an economic leader with strong business activity in areas including advanced manufacturing, materials, automotive, computer science, robotics, and artificial intelligence.
Fall 2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the exchange. A three-day celebration is planned for October 28–30, 2024, at the Ministry of Science, Research, and the Arts in Stuttgart, Germany, with participation by guests from across the University of Massachusetts system and the nine Baden-Württemberg research universities.
“This celebration will highlight the successes of the exchange and lay the groundwork for the future of our partnership,” says Trivedi. “Our goal is to continue strengthening research collaborations not only between UMass Amherst and the Baden-Württemberg universities but also to expand mobility opportunities at the other UMass campuses."
“I’m delighted to see this milestone in our long relationships with the many outstanding institutions of higher education in Baden-Württemberg and look forward to growth in research collaborations,” adds Mike Malone, UMass Amherst vice chancellor for research and engagement.
Building Connections
Over the course of their long-standing relationship, UMass Amherst and the coordinating campus in Baden-Württemberg—currently the University of Hohenheim—have sought to foster new international collaborations between researchers.
“We’ve created strategic matching documents listing research institutes, centers, labs, and departments, which take into account the strengths of the respective campuses in Baden-Württemberg and Massachusetts,” explains Wirth. “We hold virtual research matching conversations—sort of like speed dating events—centered around different research areas—such as health and well-being, advanced materials and manufacturing, or climate and the environment—for researchers to share their work. This allows researchers to discover others with complementary interests and begin to build relationships, knowing there is seed funding available to help kickstart collaborations.”
Ahead of the exchange’s 60th anniversary, a Researcher Mobility Program was established in the 2023–24 academic year to advance collaboration and strengthen existing partnerships between researchers from both states. Grants of up to $3,000 were offered to support research exchanges in the priority areas of health, performance, and well-being; agriculture and food systems; and climate, sustainability, and energy.
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Associate Professor of Biology Jeffrey Blanchard was one of the UMass faculty awarded funding to travel to Baden-Württemberg and meet with computer scientist Daniel Huson, one of the world’s best-known developers of new algorithms for bioinformatics. Blanchard’s research involves sequencing the DNA and RNA of microbes found in forest soils to understand how they are evolving in response to climate change. He also studies industrial applications of newly discovered microbes. Blanchard has an ongoing collaboration with a researcher at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and was intrigued by the call for proposals for the Research Mobility Program.
“Without this opportunity, I don’t think I would have ever reached out to Dr. Huson, whom I’d only met once before at a conference years ago,” says Blanchard. But he was excited by the prospect of collaborating with Huson, who has developed sophisticated algorithms that allow scientists to reconstruct the history of microbial genes—and thrilled when Huson responded positively to the outreach.
The two met in December 2023 at the University of Tübingen and had a productive brainstorming session. They began laying the groundwork for a joint grant proposal to the National Science Foundation, which would support collaborative work to apply the algorithms developed by Huson to Blanchard’s study of microbes. They also discussed a project for one of Huson’s students and are planning future meetings, including a one-day seminar that Huson will deliver at UMass in fall 2024.
“It was special to go and meet another scholar,” said Blanchard. “All of a sudden, things start coming together for a cool joint project.”
Another researcher mobility grant recipient, Lucy Xiaolu Wang, an assistant professor in the Department of Resource Economics at UMass, sought to foster collaborations with the economics department at the University of Mannheim in the areas of health economics and economics of innovation. Prior to joining the UMass faculty, Wang worked as a senior research fellow for over a year at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, where she initiated projects related to drug procurement and European-focused health-care technology innovation (the Human Brain Project). Wang has also been a mentor to a PhD student and an undergraduate research assistant, both from Baden-Württemberg, since 2020.
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During her recent visit to Germany, Wang presented her work at the Munich Summer Institute, delivered a seminar at the University of Mannheim, and gave a workshop presentation at the Hasso Plattner Institute.
“The questions, comments, and suggestions gathered during my presentations were extremely helpful in improving my papers,” says Wang, helping to advance her paper under revision and re-submission at the Journal of Public Economics.
Wang also enjoyed meaningful discussions with colleagues at the University of Mannheim and ZEW-Mannheim and developed strong, new relationships with two postdocs. She also provided feedback to University of Mannheim PhD students and economics job market candidates.
Wang plans to connect again with her Baden-Württemberg host and his postdoc in Massachusetts in the near future, as well as to continue brainstorming ideas for future collaborations. She will also continue supporting her Baden-Württemberg mentee in her upcoming job market endeavors, noting, “We are collaborating on a new project, combining our expertise to contribute meaningfully to research and policy.”
Overall, Wang says, “The Baden-Württemberg-UMass exchange program offers me new and refreshing opportunities to know researchers with whom I otherwise won’t be able to connect. The opportunity to present my work, collect feedback, share my colleagues’ research, and explain the resources available at UMass helps to enhance the university's global impact and expand research collaborations worldwide.”
Lutz Grossmann, assistant professor of food science at UMass Amherst, received funding to travel to the University of Hohenheim and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), home to two of the best food science and engineering programs in Germany. An alumnus of the University of Hohenheim himself, Grossmann’s decision to join the UMass faculty was partly inspired by peers who had participated in the exchange program.
Grossman’s research seeks to investigate new sustainable protein sources for food applications, mainly derived from plants and fungi. He visited a lab at KIT working on gas fermentation, a novel sustainable fermentation process also done in his own lab. Grossmann was intrigued by the KIT lab’s setup and technology, which inspired him to investigate a similar setup for his lab. He was also pleasantly surprised to learn that KIT researchers are working on similar research to his own to develop meat alternatives.
Grossmann also sought to reinvigorate a formerly vibrant student and faculty exchange at the University of Hohenheim, which has slowed in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the enactment of more stringent visa restrictions. Due to his efforts, two Hohenheim PhD food science students are visiting the UMass Department of Food Science in the second half of 2024. “If successful, I hope this leads to continued collaboration with the University of Hohenheim,” says Grossmann.
“For me, the most important thing is that these students learn something new in our department and bring it back to their home university in Germany, or that they teach me something new. It’s a mutual benefit for both universities,” he adds. “That’s what science is all about—creating new knowledge and making it accessible to everyone.”
A Model for UMass's Global Partnerships
Building on the success of the 2023–24 Researcher Mobility Program, both UMass Amherst and Baden-Württemberg are already planning new rounds of funding in the 2024–25 academic year and beyond.
Trivedi sees the Baden-Württemberg exchange as a model for UMass Amherst’s strategic international partnerships in other parts of the world. “It's part of our global strategy to find nodes around the world where we can build broad and deep partnerships with several different types of activities,” he says.
For example, UMass has a nearly 150-year-old relationship with Hokkaido University in Japan. While it originally began with a focus on agricultural scholarship in the 19th century, it has since grown to include student exchanges and research collaborations in other areas, such as computer science and polymer science and engineering.
More recently, an existing student exchange between UMass Amherst and the University College of Dublin has been expanded to promote faculty research collaborations between the two universities. A 2024 program provides seed funding for strategic research initiatives that advance novel, multidisciplinary approaches in areas including sustainability, empowering societies and communities, and advanced materials and manufacturing.
This story was originally published in August 2024.
