Peter-André Alt Elected New President of Freie Universität
Prof. Dr. Peter-André Alt und Prof. Dr. Monika Schäfer-Korting
Image Credit: Freie Universität / Wannenmacher
News from May 20, 2010
Extended Academic Senate Voted for Monika Schäfer-Korting as Executive Vice President
No. 139 issued on 05/12/2010
The literary scholar Prof. Dr. Peter-André Alt was elected president of Freie Universität Berlin. In today’s session of the extended Academic Senate, he received 37 out of 50 votes cast on the first ballot. In the election of the executive vice president, 35 members of the extended Academic Senate voted for Prof. Dr. Monika Schäfer-Korting. There were no rival candidates for either office.
It is expected that the extended Academic Senate will elect the other vice presidents of Freie Universität Berlin in July 2010. The current vice presidents will exercise their duties until the election and the start of their successors. The four-year term of office of the president and executive vice president will begin with their appointment by the Senate of Berlin. The new elections were necessary because the term of office of the previous president of Freie Universität Berlin, Prof. Dr. Dieter Lenzen, ended ahead of schedule in March this year because of his change to the University of Hamburg.
Prof. Dr. Peter-André Alt thanked his constituents for their confidence and said, “Freie Universität Berlin is facing major challenges in the coming years. I would like to meet these challenges with you.” Alt said that under his guidance, the university would take its teaching obligations seriously as well as continue to be successful in the national and international competition for research funds. Alt also assured the members of the extended Academic Senate who did not vote for him that he would fulfill his role as president and the responsibility that goes with it with much seriousness and commitment. “Even though my proposals and my program today could not convince everyone, I will not let them down,” said the newly elected president. “If we define the dissent that is inevitable in spite of many commonalities as a necessary dispute about the right way for Freie Universität, I am confident that we will cope successfully with the difficult balancing act that the university faces.”
Prof. Dr. Peter-André Alt, born in 1960 in Berlin, studied German, political science, history, and philosophy at Freie Universität. He completed his doctorate in 1984 and habilitation in 1993. Since 1995, Alt has held appointments as a professor of modern German literature, first at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (1995 to 2002), then at Universität Würzburg (2002 to 2005), and since 2005 at Freie Universität Berlin. He has published numerous books on German literature of the 17th, 18th, and 20 centuries. In 2005 Alt won the Schiller Prize from the city of Marburg for his two-volume biography of Schiller. In 2008 he received the Opus Magnum grant from the Volkswagen and Thyssen foundations for the conclusion of his book project The Aesthetics of Evil. From 2007 to 2009 Alt was dean of the Department of Philosophy and Humanities, and since 2007 he has been a member of the Academic Senate of Freie Universität Berlin. Since 2007 Alt has been the director of Freie Universität’s Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies that was selected for funding in the German Excellence Initiative. He has been the director of Dahlem Research School since 2008.
Prof. Dr. Monika Schäfer-Korting, born in 1952 in Gießen, studied pharmacy at Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main, where she completed her doctorate in 1977 under Ernst Mutschler. That was followed by her habilitation in 1989. Since 1992 she has been teaching and conducting research at Freie Universität Berlin. In 1994 Schäfer-Korting was appointed to the newly established chair in pharmacology and toxicology at the Institute of Pharmacy at Freie Universität Berlin. Schäfer-Korting is a member of the BMBF NanoDerm and “Hautmetabolismus” research alliances, as well as the EU Coordination Group “Accelerating the transition to a toxicity pathway-based paradigm for chemical safety assessment” (AXLR8). For the development of lipid nanoparticles, she received in 2007, together with Rainer H. Müller, the 10,000 € WissensWerte transfer prize from the TSB Technology Foundation Berlin. In 2008 she won the Dorothy Hegarty Award for the best published paper in ATLA (Alternatives to Laboratory Animals). After a first term from 1997 to 1999, Schäfer-Korting has again been a member of the Executive Board of Freie Universität Berlin since 2007, serving as vice president.
Further Information
Goran Krstin
Press Spokesperson of the President
Freie Universität Berlin
Tel.: +49 (0)30 838-73106
E-mail: goran.krstin@fu-berlin.de
