The University of Bremen has a growing reputation for cutting-edge research. The German Minister of Education and Science, Professor Johanna Wanka, paid a visit to the University of Bremen to gain her own first-hand impression. To name just one of the fascinating objects of research at the University of Bremen’s MARUM Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen – deposits from a meteorite that hit the Earth some 65 million years ago i. Among the many other things the Minister saw during her tour of MARUM was the QUEST dive robot and a new underwater drill rig called MARUM-MeBo 200. The MARUM scientists also showed Prof. Wanka around the international core repository that contains about 90 miles of sediment core samples taken from the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The Bremen core repository is the largest of the world’s three repositories set up within the frame of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). The Minister’s visit was rounded off with a discussion about the benefits to society accruing from ocean research, the way forward, and how to strengthen cooperation between universities and non-university research institutions.

Minister Wanka was accompanied on her visit by the President of the Bremen Senate, Mayor of Bremen and Senator for Culture, Jens Böhrnsen, and Bremen’s Senator for Science, Prof. Dr. Eva Quante-Brandt, as well as MARUM Director, Prof. Dr. Michael Schulz. The tour of MARUM was the last station of her visit to the Federal State of Bremen.

MARUM has been carrying out research into key processes in the marine environment for over ten years now. In 2012 its research funding was boosted in 2012 within the context of the Excellence Cluster “The Ocean in the Earth System – MARUM”, part of the Excellence Initiative launched by the German Government and the Federal States. The Excellence Cluster is one of the three concepts that qualified for support in all three funding lines of the competitive call under the 2012 Excellence Initiative, namely Graduate Schools, Excellence Clusters, and Institutional Strategy.