Science in the Hamburg Region
The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, one of the 16 states of the Federal Republic of German and one of three City States, is the second largest city in Germany with a population of 1.7 million. Hamburg is also culturally and commercially the centre of Northern Germany. For the purpose of regional development, the metropolitan region of Hamburg which encompasses the peripheral regions of the city which lie in the border areas of the states of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony is taken into account. This region consists of 4 million people inhabiting an area of 18,000 km2 - seven times the size of Paris and 2 ½ times that of London.
Hamburg is an area with one of the highest income rates in Europe and an economically dominant service sector. It is the world’s 5th largest port. Hamburg’s hinterland encompasses the Baltic and Central and Eastern European regions covering over ten countries with a total population of 75 million and responsible for about a third of the European export volume. Hamburg’s long standing trading tradition means that there are deep rooted contacts to the USA, S America and the Far East.
Hamburg has approximately 120.000 small and medium enterprises. It is one of the three key manufacturing bases for Airbus in Europe – itself a European success story in the integration and exploitation of European centres of competence - and as a consequence the aircraft supply industry forms a key backbone in the manufacturing economy. Medical technologies are also well represented through the presence of leading multi-national medical technology companies such as Philips Medical Systems, Olympus and Ethicon.
See The Official Website of Hamburg
Science in the Hamburg Region
Hamburg has many public and private R&D performers covering almost every field of research with particular emphasis on materials technologies, medical technologies, microelectronics, biotechnology, transport and logistics. Long established is the Centre for Marine and Climate research, but new areas such as in life sciences and nano-technologies are now being very strongly supported. 5,7% of its population are engaged in R&D which puts it in second place behind Hessen in Germany. Hamburg has 56 patents per head of population making it middle ranking, but still R&D accounts for a small proportion of total turnover due to the pre-eminence of trade as the key source of income. It has however the third strongest level of growth in R&D from 1991-99.
Hamburg has three main university and higher education establishments directly financed by the City State: the University of Hamburg (Information in English), the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH) (English information), the University of Applied Sciences (HAW) (Information in German). Furthermore it hosts one of the two locations of the University of the Bundeswehr now known as Helmut Schmidt University, Universität der Bundeswehr. A major European research facility belonging to the Helmholtz Association, the Deutsches Electron-Synchrotron DESY, is located in Hamburg providing employment for more than 2900 scientists from 33 different nations. Three Max Planck Institutes are located in the City.
To further the aims of making Hamburg’s higher educational opportunities more international, a private university, the Northern Institute of Technology (NIT), was founded in 1999. It offers bachelor and masters degrees in for example global technology management. NIT is located on the campus of the TUHH. Students from over 40 countries are sponsored by host German companies. It is intended to engage some of the students in some of the activities.
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