International collaboration

​TU Dresden is one of eleven German Universities of Excellence and ranks 5th among German universities in terms of EU contribution and project participations in Horizon 2020. The TU Dresden has partnerships with 99 universities worldwide.

The flagship of our international collaborations is the transCampus^® initiative – the first of its kind in Europe – a university partnership between TU Dresden and King's College London (KCL). For the first time two leading universities have formed a transnational campus with joint professorships and deans, joint PhD and MD programs, joint administrative and lab structures, and complementary translational and accelerator projects (https://transcampus.eu/). The transCampus^® network on Mental Health (https://transcampus.eu/mental-health) builds a unique partnership between the Centre for Mental Health and the Faculty of Psychology at the TUD and the Centre for Affective Disorders at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at KCL.

Selection of further international networks:

• Network for Early Recognition and Intervention in Bipolar Disorders (NERIBID, M. Bauer, A. Pfennig)
• International Society for Bipolar Disorders (ISBD) Task Force on antecedents of bipolar disorders (A. Pfennig)
• International Society for Bipolar Disorders (ISBD) task force on chronobiology (P. Ritter)
• European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Task Force on Prevention of Mental Disorders and Mental Health Promotion (A. Pfennig)
• European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Bipolar Disorders Network (M. Bauer, E. Severus)
• Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics Through Meta Analysis (ENIGMA) consortium (S. Ehrlich, K. Rubia, M. Bauer)
• IMAGEN (Imaging Genetics): TUD and IoPPN/King's College London (KCL), UK; INSERN, France; Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland; Charité Berlin, ZI Mannheim, UKE Hamburg
• Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) (https://www.semel.ucla.edu/)
• COFI network: TUD and WHO Collaborating Centre for Mental Health Services and Development, Queen Mary University of London, UK, University of Verona, Italy, Université Catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium, University of Warsaw, Poland, IoPPN/King's College London  (S. Priebe, A. Pfennig)
• IGSLi TUD and Research institutes and universities across Europe, North-and South America (http://igsli.org/)

The University of Leipzig (UL) currently boasts 58 bilateral partnerships with international universities, 19 within Europe and 39 outside of the EU, offering an ideal framework for joint research endeavours and international educational exchange. Additionally, more than 80 international faculty partnerships have been established. UL is also a member of the Arqus European University Alliance, a multilateral consortium of internationalized institutions who share academic, scientific and cultural objectives to promote excellence in research and education. UoL also belongs to the Utrecht Network comprising 32 universities from 27 countries and partnerships with the Australian-European-Network (AEN) and the Mid-American Universities International (MAUI) Network in the United States.

The Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (Prof. G. Schomerus) at University of Leipzig Medical Center is involved in a number of international consortia and uni-/multilateral research endeavours, most notably in the field of stigma research. Key examples include the International Study of Discrimination and Stigma Outcomes (INDIGO) network with members from over 40 countries and coordinated by the Centre for Global Mental Health, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London, UK (www.indigo-group.org) and the Self-Stigma Research Collaborative headed by the Department of Psychology at Iowa State University, USA (SSRC, https://selfstigma.psych.iastate.edu). Other noteworthy international collaborations in the field of stigma research address stigma and help-seeking, public stigma in low and middle income households, and the joint development of culturally sensitive stigma measures, including partners in the USA, Hong Kong, Lithuania, India, Vietnam, Austria, Australia, and the UK.

The Institute of Social Medicine, Occupational Medicine and Public Health (ISAP) at the UL's Medical Faculty (Chair: S. Riedel-Heller) is extensively involved in collaborative work with international consortia. For instance, COSMIC (Cohort Studies of Memory in an International Consortium) seeks to examine the risk and protective factors for cognitive decline, frailty and chronic disease associated with ageing by drawing together 37 cohort studies of cognitive ageing from 29 different countries across six continents.

The platform for community participatory research also operates on an international level by establishing an international board consisting of at least two members with sufficient English knowledge to participate and act in international meetings of the group and to collaborate with international associations (e.g. GAMIAN Europe- the voice of patients in mental health).

​The flagship of our international collaborations is the transCampus® initiative – the first of its kind in Europe – a university partnership between TU Dresden and King's College London (KCL). For the first time two leading universities have formed a transnational campus with joint professorships and deans, joint PhD and MD programs, joint administrative and lab structures, and complementary translational and accelerator projects (https://transcampus.eu/).

The transCampus^® network on Mental Health (https://transcampus.eu/mental-health) builds a unique partnership between the Centre for Mental Health and the Faculty of Psychology at the TUD and the Centre for Affective Disorders at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at KCL. The Centre for Mental Health and the Faculty of Psychology at the TUD offer a state-of-the-art research infrastructure for research in psychiatry and cognitive-affective neuroscience and maintains numerous interdisciplinary collaborations with leading research institutions worldwide. KCL's IoPPN is a top-ranking world-leading centre of mental health research (second after Harvard and leading in Europe) that promotes cutting edge collaborative research within an interdisciplinary context. The conditions and disorders under investigation impact people at every stage in life, with a particular emphasis on neurodevelopmental disorders in childhood and adolescence followed through to adult mental ill-health. Insights from discovery science (including neuroscience, genomics, social science and psychology) are translated to diagnostics and interventions to improve patient care and quality of life. IoPPN's research facilities have secured positions at the forefront of international scientific research and make major contributions to teaching, training, and research by inspiring and nurturing the next generation of scientific leaders. Within the transCampus^® network on Mental Health we examine risk factors and pathomechanisms of mental disorders to improve early identification, understanding and treatment. M. Bauer and A.H. Young have collaborated on a variety of projects in the domain of affective disorders and lithium treatment largely under the auspices of international societies (International Society for Bipolar Disorders, ISBD; International Group for the Study of Lithium-treated patients, IGSLi). More recently  shared seed funding for the examination of on mental disorders in families (C. Pariante, S. Knappe, J. Martini) and a shared seed grant for the investigation of neural mechanisms during the treatment of bipolar depression with esketamine was raised (A.H. Young, P. Ritter). V. Roessner and K. Rubia have collaborated on neuroimaging projects in ADHD.

The transCampus® initiative provides an established joint PhD program for exchange and joint supervision of PhD students, building on the long-term research cooperation of TUD and KCL/IoPPN.