The University of Bayreuth has been engaged in intensive collaboration with universities in Australia for many years and has been intensified since the Gateway Office opened in 2018. The Gateway Office (GO) is in Melbourne and hosted by the University of Melbourne, but it coordinates active research collaborations and projects between UBT and its numerous partners in Australia and New Zealand.
The collaboration emerged from intensive disciplinary relationships that was formalised and supported by the Bayreuth-Melbourne Colloid/Polymer Network from 2015-2020. The Network focused on developing innovative materials for applications in the energy sector and in medicine and brought together the University of Bayreuth, other German and international research institutes. This led the foundation for Joint PhD possible at both leading Australian universities for Bayreuth's doctoral researchers in this field and for an expansion of collaboration both in numbers, disciplines and partnerships.
The emphasis of the cooperation is on research collaboration, joint grants, joint PhD programs as well as student and staff mobility. Active joint PhD programs exist with the University of Melbourne, Monash University, Deakin University, La Trobe University, Swinburne University of Technology and Queensland University of Technology. Subject areas include, but aren’t limited to: Physics, Chemistry, Sport Science, Law, Economics, Energy, Environmental Research, Materials Sciences, and Engineering.
Highlights from recent cooperations are the IRTG program Optexc between Prof. Anna Köhler’s chair at UBT with colleagues at the University of Melbourne and Monash University, long-standing collaboration Biomaterials between Prof. Scheibel and colleagues at the University of Melbourne, Monash University, Swinburne University of Technology and CSIRO, an active collaboration and PhD cohort with a focus on Hydrogen with the Victorian Hydrogen Hub, collaboration with Deakin in Sport Technology the possibility to apply for a scholarship for an LLM at the Melbourne University Law School, as well as the Bavaria-Queensland Research Alliance.
