Institute of Molecular Biology: a true milestone.
With its 2009 pledge to donate a total of 100 million euros over ten years, the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation enabled the establishment and scientific activities of the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) at the University of Mainz. The State of Rhineland-Palatinate simultaneously provided 50 million euros for the construction of the IMB’s new research building.
Within just 15 months, a life sciences institute was thus established that by any international standard is excellently equipped and offers optimal conditions for research. The IMB is a so-called non-university institute and a wholly owned subsidiary of the University of Mainz located on its campus. At the end of 2020, the IMB employed more than 250 people from over 50 countries.
A further pledge by the foundation of about 54 million euros – together with a further 52 million euros pledged by the State of Rhineland-Palatinate – ensures the core funding of the IMB on an internationally competitive level until the middle of 2027.
The context and aims of funding.
With the funding of IMB, the foundation aims to establish and maintain Mainz as an internationally renowned leading centre of basic research in the life sciences.
IMB: an outstanding example of long-term research funding.
With its pledge of two major donations, the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation ensures a solid core funding for the IMB until 2027 (since 2020 jointly with the State of Rhineland-Palatinate).
The prospects offered by IMB – coupled with its maximum degree of research freedom, scientific independence, and excellent financial conditions – have proved to be compelling. Christof Niehrs, a world-leading cell and developmental biologist, could be won as the founding director of the IMB. Professor Niehrs is an awardee of the German Research Foundation's Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, Germany’s most prestigious research prize. Subsequently, the University of Mainz succeeded in appointing two further internationally prominent and leading researchers as scientific directors of the IMB, Professor René Ketting of the Netherlands and Professor Helle Ulrich from England. At the end of 2022, IMB counted 21 teams of scientists conducting solely curiosity-driven and knowledge-based basic research on a variety of topics, including how organisms develop, how they repair their own DNA, and how the stability and activity of genes are regulated. How does the human body develop and why does it become ill? These are the key questions that IMB research would like to help answer over the long term.
Clear framework conditions to ensure independence and quality.
The basic principles of the funding of IMB at the University of Mainz by the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation, of the joint funding activities with the State of Rhineland-Palatinate, and of the cooperative partnership between the University of Mainz and the IMB are governed by written funding agreements. The funding agreement between the state, the foundation, the university, and the IMB specifies the purpose and aim of the initiative: the establishment and development of an international research centre of excellence in the life sciences. It also defines and regulates IMB's financing, its accompanying rights and duties, and its quality assurance process.
All of the scientists who receive funding from the foundation are conducting solely cuiosity-driven basic research. They independently decide which questions to address and which findings they with to publish, and where. IMB's website offers insights into the research of IMB scientists. The rights to IMB's research findings belong exclusively to the scientists and to the IMB. The Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation has no access to these rights.
As part of the IMB's quality assurance process, and to ensure that funds provided by the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation and the State are used according to legal requirements, the IMB undertakes, among other things, to submit annual research reports, document its use of funds in a yearly financial report audited by accredited auditors, and implement quality assurance measures. The IMB's annual research report is freely available on the Institute's website. Regular-interval evaluations of the entire institute and its individual research groups by a review committee of internationally leading scientists in IMB’s fields of research ensure a continuously high quality of research and training of junior scientists at IMB.