Darmstadt, 15th May 2024. Professor Malte Göttsche is to take over the newly-created Professorship for Peace Research in Natural Sciences in June 2024. It is being set up jointly by TU Darmstadt and the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) as part of the joint project “Cluster for Natural and Technical Science Arms Control Research” (CNTR), and is initially being funded by the Federal Foreign Office. With the appointment of Malte Göttsche, PRIF and TU Darmstadt are contributing to the strengthening of scientific and technical peace research in Hesse.
Nuclear arms control, verification and disarmament require physical expertise; changing political circumstances and new technologies bring new challenges. At the same time, technological developments offer great potential for improving arms control, for instance with new detector systems. The Professorship for Peace Research in Natural Sciences is being set up at the Department of Physics of the Technical University of Darmstadt and filled by Malte Göttsche in order to strengthen basic research and policy advice in this area. At the same time, the research Group “Science for Nuclear Diplomacy” is being established at PRIF, which is located within the CNTR project and is headed by Göttsche. This will expand the interdisciplinary research and cooperation between the TU and non-university research institutions, while at the same time creating career opportunities for early career researchers.
“With the establishment of the Professorship for Peace Research in Natural Science, we are implementing a recommendation made in 2019 by the German Council of Science and Humanities to strengthen scientific conflict and peace research in Germany,” says TU President Professor Tanja Brühl. “Thus we are building on a tradition of interdisciplinary peace and conflict research in the Rhine-Main region. I firmly believe that with regard to nuclear arms control, Malte Göttsche’s innovative research will provide excellent developments in this field. I am delighted that we are able to deepen and strengthen the cooperation with the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt as a non-university partner of our university. Many thanks to all our colleagues who made the establishment of this professorship possible and who accompanied it!”
“We are extremely pleased that we have been able to gain a proven expert in Malte Göttsche,” says Professor Christopher Daase, Deputy Director of PRIF and Speaker of the CNTR project. “With this joint appointment, we are strengthening the cooperation with TU Darmstadt, which is essential for our interdisciplinary research.” The new professorship also strengthens the Master’s degree programme in International Studies / Peace and Conflict Studies, which is offered together with Goethe University Frankfurt as part of the strategic alliance of the Rhine-Main universities.
A new competence centre is being created along with the professorship and the research group that will contribute technological expertise to the dialogue with politics and society. “Physical research can and must make an important contribution to arms control,” says Professor Malte Göttsche. “I am delighted to contribute to the expansion of scientific and technical peace research in Hesse.”
About the Person
Professor Dr. Malte Göttsche will remain Assistant Professor of Nuclear Verification and Disarmament at RWTH Aachen University until the end of May. There he heads the BMBF-funded joint project VeSPoTec, which conducts interdisciplinary research on verification and nuclear arms control. Work on this project is also to be continued in Darmstadt and Frankfurt. Prior to this, he was a research associate at Princeton University. With his research into nuclear archaeology – funded in Aachen by a Freigeist Fellowship of the Volkswagen Foundation – he has made a significant contribution to the further development of verification methods. This innovative approach helps to establish whether a country has actually declared its entire stockpiles of weapons-grade material. Malte Göttsche was awarded the Nuclear-Free Future Award in 2022. He participated in the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings 2019 and was a member of Junges Kolleg of the NRW Academy of Sciences and Arts.
About TU Darmstadt
TU Darmstadt is one of the leading technical universities in Germany and stands for excellent and relevant science. TU Darmstadt plays a key role in shaping global transformations – from the energy transition to Industry 4.0 to artificial intelligence – through outstanding findings and forward-looking study programmes.
The university bundles its cutting-edge research in three fields: Energy and Environment; Information and Intelligence; Matter and Materials. Its problem-centred interdisciplinarity and productive exchanges with society, business and politics generate progress for sustainable development worldwide.
Since it was founded in 1877, TU Darmstadt has been one of the most internationally orientated universities in Germany. As a European technical university, it is building a trans-European campus in the Unite! alliance. Together with its partners from the Rhine-Main universities – Goethe University Frankfurt and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz – it is further developing the Frankfurt-Rhine-Main metropolitan region as a globally appealing scientific area.
About PRIF – Peace Research Institute Frankfurt
PRIF – Peace Research Institute Frankfurt is a foundation under public law funded by the federal government and the state of Hesse. PRIF conducts research on peace-relevant issues, undertakes basic knowledge-orientated research, and transfers practice-relevant results to politics and society. Founded in 1970, the institute has been a member of the Leibniz Association since 2009.
About CNTR
The Cluster for Natural and Technical Science Arms Control Research (CNTR) is a joint research project between PRIF – Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, Technical University of Darmstadt, and Justus Liebig University Giessen. CNTR researches new technologies and developments in the natural sciences from an interdisciplinary perspective and develops recommendations to strengthen arms control. The Federal Foreign Office is funding CNTR for a period of four years.
To the Press Release (in German)