European Neuroscience Institute, Göttingen

ENI-G is a joint project between the University of Göttingen Medical School and two Max Planck Institutes (MPI for biophysical Chemistry and MPI for experimental Medicine). Presently 4 Young Investigator groups are working in newly renovated labora tories.

In late 2005, a new building was finished, which is dedicated to the ENI-teams and can accommodate up to six groups. Each group is assigned a ‘mentor‘ – an established investigator from one of the participating institutions – who is responsible for securing access to infrastructure and contacts with the local neuroscience community. There are approximately 50 principal investigators active in various fields of Cellular and Molecular Neurosciences on the premises of the participating institutions with a multitude of formal and informal collaborations among them, such as joint participation in Networks funded by the EU, two Marie Curie Training Sites, several groups grants by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and, most notably, the National Research Center on ‘Molecular Physiology of the Brain‘.

The latter grant was awarded as a result of a nationwide competition in 2002. The participating institutions also cooperate in an international Graduate Program (Master/PhD) in the Neurosciences. The four groups share an optical microscopy facility and have accumulated spezial expertise in advanced microscopic techniques, such as fluorescence lifetime microscopy and multiphoton fluorescence excitation.