History
Heading towards our 30th anniversary.
The Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds (BIF) was established in 1983. Its founders, the holding companies of Boehringer Ingelheim, C.H. Boehringer Sohn and Boehringer Ingelheim International, wanted to create an independent, non-profit organization for the promotion of basic research in biomedicine. From the very beginning, the foundation has focused on supporting the most promising up-and-coming scientists and on stimulating scientific exchange with our fellowships, the travel grants programme and the International Titisee Conferences.
The foundation's fellowship programmes have become a great success: What started out as a small southern German programme - at the very first meeting of the Board of Trustees in June 1983, only four applicants were awarded a fellowship - has since developed into a vibrant international network of more than 1,100 fellows and alumni. Today, the growing group of BIF scholars count among its members distinguished academics in leading research institutions around the world, including 149 professors and four awardees of Germany's most prestigious science prize - the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. We are proud of this achievement, and we are confident that in 2013 we will have more than enough reason to celebrate our 30th anniversary.
Sharpening our profile.
In 1988, the foundation's then managing director, Dr Hasso Schroeder, and his team moved from Degerloch near Stuttgart to more comfortable premises in Stuttgart's Stafflenbergstraße. For twelve years, the BIF stayed in Stuttgart. In 1990, Dr Hermann Fröhlich stepped into office as the new managing director. Under his aegis the foundation sharpened its profile: In 1995 we concentrated our long-term fellowship programme on PhDs. Due to a steep increase in applications, we stopped funding postdoctoral fellows as the workload proved to be insurmountable, and larger organizations had begun to support Postdocs. For similar reasons, the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds Research Awards for Postdocs were stopped.
As a result of this process of formation, the foundation is now solidly based on four pillars:
The fellowship programmes for PhDs and MDs, the Travel Grants programme for postdoctoral fellows, PhDs and MDs, and the International Titisee Conferences.
In 2000, the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds moved to Heidesheim near Mainz. Since 2009, Dr. Claudia Walther is the foundation's managing director. She and her team manage the continual adaptation of BIF's programmes and services while striving to keep the spirit of BIF unchanged.
