Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Christoph M. Schmidt, holder of the chair of Economic Policy and Applied Econometrics and RWI president, has been appointed by the organisation „Gemeinsamen Wissenschaftskonferenz“ (GWK) to the expert committee of the program for the promotion of top-level research at universities – “Exzellenzstrategie”.

In addition to Prof. Schmidt, the committee includes 39 internationally acknowledged academic members, including researchers from the University of Cambridge, Princeton University, Stanford. University and Harvard University. The complete list of members can be found at https://www.gwk-bonn.de/themen/foerderung-von-hochschulen/exzellenzstrategie-exzellenzinitiative/

The „Exzellenzstrategie “, successor to the „Exzellenzinitiative“ launched jointly by the Federal and State Governments in 2005, comprises the two funding programmes „Exzellenzuniversität“ und Exzellenzcluster. The committee of experts, to which Prof. Schmidt has now been appointed, decides on the allocation of funding together with the responsible federal and state ministries. These funds amount to a total of 533 million euros annually.

Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Christoph M. Schmidt holds the Chair of Economic Policy and Applied Econometrics at the Faculty of Management and Economics at the Ruhr- Universität Bochum and is president of the RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research. From 2009 to 2020, he was a member of the German Council of Economic Experts (Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung) and from March 2013 to February 2020 its chairman. He received his doctorate from Princeton University in 1991 and habilitated at the University of Munich in 1995. In 2019, he received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Economics and Management at Leibniz Universität Hannover.