Allgemein

On 17th March 2020, Technische Universität Dresden’s Extended Senate elected Ursula M. Staudinger to be the new Rector for a designated term of five years. She is scheduled to take office in mid-August 2020.

In the run-up to the election, presentations were held at the University. Ursula M. Staudinger highlighted the successful substantiation of TU Dresden’s University of Excellence application as a pivotal task for her tenure as Rector and thereby leading the University to a confirmation of its excellence status. To this end, the strengthening of broad interdisciplinarity on equal footing will be of crucial importance.

Excellent Research and Teaching

Staudinger states that, naturally, excellent research must go hand in hand with excellent and innovative teaching. “In addition, I would like to develop TU Dresden into a global university for the 21^st century, and I see the 200^th anniversary in 2028 as an important milestone in this process.” TU Dresden can make decisive contributions to mastering the global challenges facing humanity and at the same time further expand its role as an important societal stakeholder.

As a former professor at TU Dresden, she was deeply impressed by the development of the University in recent years: “It was not least this performance curve of the University that motivated me to apply for the position of Rector.” Professor Ursula M. Staudinger has extensive leadership and management experience, not to mention excellent knowledge of other academic systems, which she would like to bring to TU Dresden, as well as her excellent international networks.

Farewell to Columbia University

Ursula Staudinger has been working at Columbia University in New York since 2013, where she was the Founding Director of the Robert N. Butler Aging Center for five years. She will leave Columbia University in August. “It is not easy for me to leave Columbia University and the extraordinary interdisciplinary network that I was able to build up with colleagues there. I hope I can maintain a close relationship with Columbia,” says Staudinger.

Towards Health: Equality, Responsibility and Research

Nobel Prize winners, world-leading researchers, political activists, media representatives and the public got together at the Nobel Prize Dialogue in Berlin on 8 November 2019. The event focused on questions concerning health: How can we achieve healthy living and a responsible healthcare provision for everyone? How can we create and promote health education as well as healthy work and environmental conditions? And what contributions can research make to all of this?

Nobel Prize Laureates and World-leading Scientists

Together with Peter Agre and Tolu Oni, Ursula Staudinger discussed the question “What does ‘Health’ mean to you?” in the opening session. Staudinger highlighted the fact that focusing on treatment and prevention of diseases is not the flip side of strengthening health resources from the beginning of life. Moreover, she alerted the audience to the fact that health is not unidimensional but rather consists of multiple domains such as physical, functional, cognitive and emotional health. And that the sources of health are accordingly multifold including genetics, behavioral patterns and contextual as well as environmental exposures.

Importance of Physical Fitness

In her talk “Mental Health and Longer Lives: Positive Plasticity of Cognitive Aging” Staudinger emphasized that the age-related decline of cognitive functioning can indeed be attenuated. “One way to change the trajectory of the decline is to invest in your aerobic physical fitness,” she said. Thus, scientific studies have shown that with increasing levels of fitness, the brains of sixty-year-old individuals need less activity to achieve better performances just like younger brains.

In the following Q & A Session on „Mental Health, Cognition and Ageing“, Nobel laureate Edvard Moser and Ursula Staudinger answered questions of participants. Both agreed that human brains are extremely adaptable and that activity as well as exposure to novelty and challenge are key factors to prevent cognitive decline. Asked about the effects of new technologies on the trajectory of cognitive decline, Staudinger said that new technologies can be helpful to compensate for experienced decline such as the loss in memory function. Yet we need to be mindful that such support does not create disuse where use is still possible. Therefore, it is crucial for education in the 21^st century to convey digital competence in the sense of becoming “masters of the toys and the information they provide”. Both scientists showed great optimism about healthy aging. Yet they also pointed to hazards such as air pollution that might put a stop to the positive trend.

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About the Event

The event has traditionally taken place during the week of the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony since 2012 and was now held in Germany for the first time. Bridging science and society, the Nobel Prize Dialogue inspires and honors human ingenuity, research and collaborative, creative thinking.

In its role as German National Academy of Sciences, the Leopoldina has been advising politicians and society on key future issues for ten years. On 21st and 22nd September 2018, the Leopoldina Annual Assembly set to focus on science-based policy under the motto ‘Nature – Science – Society’. Ursula Staudinger spoke on ‘Demographic Change and Aging’ and illustrated the most important findings and recommendations on the topic. Over 80 scientists from 10 nations have worked on these recommendations.

The average life expectancy has increased by 30 years over the past 100 years. Important drivers leading to these ‘societies of longer lives’ are the economic development, public health systems, medical sciences and practices, the development of the educational systems and finally the development of working environments. Meanwhile, all nations are affected by this increase of average life expectancy.

The societal consequences of this demographic change are often presented solely as burden to modern welfare states by means of the ‘age load quotient’ – the relation of the population older than 65 to the population aged between 20 and 64. The societal focus on the chronological age, however, ignores the fact that the human species possesses the ability to change its own nature. For human development and aging are not determined rather they are created by a continuous interaction between biology, person and culture. Aging, also in its biological components, is modifiable through influences of society and individual within its biologically set limits.

The future viability of a society with an aging population, however, is largely dependent on its own will to change. Therefore, important steps are necessary to change outdated structures in the world of education, the labor market and national economies, in regions and communities, families, civil societies and politics, in the minds of people as well as in the practice of everyday life.