A key programme objective is to place the LOEWE-funded research on a permanent footing. The former LOEWE Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F) is an outstanding example of the successful achievement of that objective. At the start of this year it became part of the Leibniz Association as an independent institute within the Senckenberg Nature Research Society; in the future, the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre will receive €6.5 million per annum in central and state government funding. That makes it the second LOEWE research centre in the first LOEWE funding series that has been given permanent status within the Leibniz Association. In mid-2014 the coordination and laboratory infrastructure of the LOEWE research centre IDeA, which conducts research into individual development processes among children, was anchored long term at the German Institute for International Educational Research (DIPF) in Frankfurt.

Brilliant prospects are also opening up for the LOEWE research centre CASED, which has likewise been funded by LOEWE since 2008. It occupies a leading European position in cyber security research and has long been a magnet attracting other research initiatives to its Darmstadt location: in early February 2015 the state government announced that CASED and its partner establishments – the Technische Universität Darmstadt, the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT) and Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences – are to be expanded to form a high-profile national and international “hotspot” of cyber security research. The Cabinet decided to invest an initial additional amount of up to €6 million in cyber security research in Darmstadt in the period from 2016 to 2018. The intention is for the cutting-edge research centre to be funded jointly by the central German government and the federal state of Hessen.

The Fraunhofer part of the LOEWE research centre AdRIA, which conducts research on noise and vibration control using adaptronic systems, is currently being transferred to the adaptronics research focus at the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability (LBF). Along with the adaptronics research cluster at the Technische Universität Darmstadt, the light-weight structures research and training area and the newly created LOEWE professorships, the LOEWE research centre AdRIA is being permanently established in Darmstadt. The LOEWE research centre HIC for FAIR, which is conducting research and preparing experiments for the particle accelerator FAIR, is well on its way to obtaining permanent status.

In December 2014 the LOEWE research cluster Digital Humanities Hessen was also placed on a firm foundation: after four years of pioneering work, its expertise is now being channelled into the newly founded Centre for the Digital Foundation of Research in the Humanities, Social, and Educational Sciences (CEDIFOR). CEDIFOR provides infrastructure and relevant advice for researchers in the humanities and social sciences in the region who would like to use IT-based methods in their research. As one of three eHumanities centres in Germany, CEDIFOR is receiving €2.1 million over three years from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.