Official Kick-off Event
The rector of the University of Stuttgart and the former rector of the University of Bergen signed a memorandum of understanding in June 2019 to create a framework for a range of extra opportunities for cooperation between the two universities. The official kick-off event, which was actually planned for April 2020, now took place under Corona conditions as a hybrid event on 22 and 23 November 2021 at the University of Stuttgart.
The kick-off event was introduced by the rector of the University of Stuttgart, Wolfram Ressel, and the rector of the University of Bergen, Margareth Hagen. The idea of the event was to unite different research groups of both universities to find matching topics, which could lead to future joint research projects. The five thematic groups were from the areas of porous media, wind energy, visualization, humanities and bioinformatics. Furthermore, our colleages from Bergen got the opportunity to visit the Cluster of Excellence SimTech, the ARENA 2036 and the High Performance Computing Center (HLRS). SFB 1313 was part of the overall organising team and contributed with a porous media workshop.
Porous Media Workshop
The porous media researchers of both universities met on both event days and discussed about future joint projects. They have a long history of cooperation (NUPUS, Vista, HyPE, SFB 1313, SimTech etc.) and strong modelling groups. In recent years a strong experimental expertise has been acquired as well, e.g. the Porous Media Lab (PML) in Stuttgart or the Fluid Flow Benchmark in Bergen. A topic for future cooperation is, amongst others, energy storage: an interdisciplinary topic beyond porous media with research importance in many other fields. Both partners are experienced in this topic and bring their own expertise. To further discuss scientific overlaps, there will be planned a joint workshop in spring/summer 2022.
Furthermore, both universities plan short and long-term exchange possibilities for students, doctoral and post-doctoral students as well as on the professorship level. In this context, shared courses, workshops, and summer schools are planned.
