Various projects from different research areas and activities at all levels of the universities are joined under the roof of the transCampus initiative.

King’s College London and TU Dresden have areas of shared interest, and the different expertise between sites provides added value and opportunity. Sharing knowledge and resources has enabled researchers to combine their strengths and to foster close collaborations, which is fundamental for scientific advances. Furthermore, the transCampus network gives students and non-academic staff exemplary opportunities to broaden their horizons and advance professionally.

Pioneering Research

The transCampus is hugely successful in stimulating research and training to tackle diabetes – in a short space of time it has become an important part of the research culture of the institutions involved.

Fiona Watt, Executive Chair of the Medical Research Council, UK, Director, Centre for Stem Cells & Regenerative Medicine, King’s College London

Research areas

The transCampus offers the unique possibility to combine interdisciplinary research in the field of medicine and engineering from which both researchers and students will benefit. In engineering, we are working together to achieve a world standard in the development of mobile communications.

Frank Fitzek, Deutsche Telekom Chair of Communication Networks at TUD

Current Research Projects

Exceptional training

An important pillar of the transCampus initiative in promoting young scientists is by providing a broad research network and specific programmes to support their early career. With three joint PhD agreements, King’s College London and Technische Universität Dresden offer outstanding PhD students in Medicine, Psychology and Stochastics a tandem supervision and the opportunity to acquire certificates from both institutions.

Learn more about our International Research Training Group 2251 focusing on metabolic diseases or get familiar with the IRTG 2773 based in Mental Health.

Working with two groups, the Suzanne Eaton Group and the Fiona Watt Group, I receive the feedback from two strong women in science and that empowers me in thought of what to do next.

Salma Ahmed PhD student IRTG

We had the chance to meet very exciting and well-known researchers such as Prof. Matthias Hebrok and Prof. Anne Grapin-Botton. It was great to learn from them and to hear about their views on diabetes research, and about future prospects in careers such as academia. Overall, it was great, and I really enjoyed that experience.

Ana-Maria Cjuba PhD student IRTG

Student Activities

transCampus is open for students and offers various opportunities in different fields. Medical students of TU Dresden and King’s, for example, have the option to do a part of their clinical traineeship at the partner institution. In Mathematics and Neuroscience, students can attend joint lectures of transCampus professors.

Another opportunity for students dealing with the challenges of becoming respected researchers is Delores 23, a writing workshop. Young scientists not only get the chance to strengthen their writing skills but also become familiar with common and in real life emerging issues that are bound to publishing in scientific journals.

Plan your transCampus experience

In 2019, I did part of my placement year as a Medical Elective student at St Thomas’ Hospital, a teaching hospital of King’s College London GKT School of Medicine. I received a weekly rotation schedule every Monday. This allowed me to gain an overview of the entire spectrum of cardiology diagnostics offered at St. Thomas’ as well as the corresponding therapy options during the eight weeks of my stay. The daily routine of the doctor – and especially that of the junior assistant – is determined by a high level of documentation, which far exceeds that of a German doctor. What really impressed me, however, was the visiting culture on the cardiology wards. The doctors’ interaction with the patients was always appreciative, respectful and predominantly unbiased. Each visiting doctor also took an extraordinary amount of time to respond to the wishes, concerns and fears of the visited person. This approach is a welcome incentive for one’s own ward work in the future.

Medical Student, TUD, 6th year of study

Unique Team Spirit

Learning from each other – staff exchange

Within transCampus, non-academic staff from both partner universities have the opportunity for an exchange or job shadowing. Some of our employees have already taken the opportunity and applied for the exchange with a proposal related to their field of expertise. The aim is to get new impulses from colleagues at the partner institution and use them for specific processes or projects at the home institution.

Plan your transCampus experience

In higher education, we can strongly benefit from our international partners. Not only research and education, also the management of a university improves by sharing knowledge and experiences, especially when the administrative framework and systems are different. This is why the staff exchange offered by transCampus is an excellent opportunity.

Steve Large, Senior Vice president (Operations), professional services staff, King’s College London
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In 2016, I spent two weeks at King’s College London to learn more about their organisational structure, the financing system and the budget planning model. In my role as head of School’s administration at the School of Medicine, I have to manage continuous organisational changes as well as budget and financial planning processes, and, last not least, the personnel development process.
Therefore, I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of the different types of financing channels, of the management of the budget planning processes, and generally of the structures of the administration department at King’s College. This exchange was a unique opportunity for me to undertake a detailed and focused review, which benefited both the School of Medicine and the transCampus, too.

Cornelia Rabeneck, Executive Manager for the School of Medicine, TU Dresden

Kick-off Workshops

Research collaborations start with shared interests of single scientists. They are the indispensable basis for international cooperation, but the transCampus initiative wants to go further and establish networks that are capable of acquiring large research projects as well as building up a variety of coherent activities.

To achieve this goal, transCampus organises kick-off workshops for groups of scientists who already made the first steps and would like to develop concrete project ideas. Over two days, King’s and TU Dresden’ scientists share their research themes and highlights, forming working groups for strategy and collaboration development.

Such workshops have already taken place in the fields of Mental Health Disorders, in Neuroscience and Material science that led to the preparation of several joint research projects, as well as to applications for large programs of national funding bodies.

Plan your transCampus experience