Millions in Funding for Research Project on Human Musculoskeletal Health
Joint Project Led by UKE and TUHH
01.12.2025
A scientific training project led by the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) and the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), which focuses on the health of the human musculoskeletal system, will be funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) with around seven million euros over the next five years. The graduate college “Interfaces – Multiscale Imaging and Analytics of Interfaces in Musculoskeletal Health” involves not only the Medical Faculty of the University of Hamburg and TUHH, but also several research institutions from Hamburg, such as DESY in Bahrenfeld and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon.
The project thus represents the special collaboration in the metropolitan region in the field of health, visible as one of six profiles within the alliance of Hamburg’s scientific institutions, PIER Plus.
“I am very pleased about the approval of the new graduate college. It underlines the high training competence of the UKE and, more generally, of the University of Hamburg as well as the Hamburg research institutions. The project uniquely connects medicine with engineering and natural sciences. My congratulations go to the entire team, especially the project leaders Prof. Dr. Björn Busse and Prof. Dr. Alexander Schlaefer,” said Prof. Dr. Blanche Schwappach-Pignataro, Dean of the Medical Faculty and member of the UKE Executive Board.
“The now approved DFG project marks another milestone in our strategy to deliberately advance excellent collaborative projects. Our cooperation with the UKE has a long tradition, which makes it all the more pleasing that this close collaboration is now crowned by such an impressive success. My recognition goes to the entire team of Prof. Busse and especially to the TUHH team led by Prof. Schlaefer,” said Prof. Dr. Irina Smirnova, Vice President for Research at TU Hamburg.
Special challenges for diagnostics, analytics, and imaging The various biological tissues of the musculoskeletal system, and especially their interfaces, decisively shape musculoskeletal health as well as the physiological and pathological processes involved. These boundary areas pose special challenges for diagnostics, analytics, and imaging due to their differing biological and physical properties. “To better understand the complex interactions in the organism, we need state-of-the-art multimodal, correlative imaging techniques and interdisciplinary expertise,” explains Prof. Dr. Björn Busse, Institute for Osteology and Biomechanics at the UKE. An important foundation for the research project is therefore the Interdisciplinary Competence Center for Interface Research (ICCIR), jointly initiated by UKE and TUHH. The new training program therefore relies on an interdisciplinary approach: early-career researchers should not only gain expertise in individual organs or tissues but also acquire cross-disciplinary understanding of biological interfaces and interactions in physiological and pathological states. To this end, methods from medicine, cell and tissue biology, biomedical engineering, materials science, data science, imaging, and machine learning are taught. This creates interdisciplinary knowledge about imaging, function, and health that is transferable from musculoskeletal interface structures to numerous other interfaces within the organism. “Hamburg offers a unique framework for this: the close cooperation between TUHH, UKE, the materials research of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, and the DESY synchrotron creates ideal conditions for this forward-looking project,” emphasizes Prof. Dr. Alexander Schlaefer from TUHH. The Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands is also involved in the training program. DFG funds graduate colleges for up to nine years Graduate colleges (GRKs) are university institutions designed to support researchers in the early stages of their careers and are funded by the DFG for a maximum of nine years. The focus is on qualifying doctoral candidates within a thematically focused research program and a structured qualification concept. An interdisciplinary orientation of graduate colleges is explicitly encouraged by the DFG. The aim is to prepare doctoral candidates intensively for the complex professional market of “science” while simultaneously supporting their early scientific independence. The new GRK 3144 will start its work on April 1, 2026, and is expected to train around 30 ambitious early-career researchers in the coming years.
Contact for inquiries
Prof. Dr. Björn Busse
Interdisciplinary Competence Center for Interface Research
Institute for Osteology and Biomechanics University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE)
Lottestraße 55A
22529 Hamburg
Phone: +49 40 7410-56687
b.busse@uke.de
Prof. Dr. Alexander Schlaefer
Interdisciplinary Competence Center for Interface Research
Institute for Medical Engineering and Intelligent Systems Hamburg University of Technology
Am Schwarzenberg-Campus 3
21073 Hamburg
Phone: +49 40 30601-3050
schlaefer@tuhh.de
TUHH - Public Relations Office
Ruediger Bendlin
E-Mail: bendlin@tuhh.de
Phone: +49 40 428 78 3330
