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Dear Alumnus of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation,

With the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the three undersigned alumni have established a new network of researchers and practitioners – the “Alexander von Humboldt Cities and Climate Change Network”.

The network aims to inform scientific and policy discourses, and to promote research and innovations based on exchange and cooperation among network members. The network also aspires to propose thoughtful solutions to the interrelated issues of urban development, energy, and global climate change.

More than 40 Alexander von Humboldt alumni worldwide have already joined the network.

The first conference of the Cities and Climate Change Network will take place on October 5-7, 2011 at the
Freie Universität Berlin. At the conference, we will review and assess existing knowledge in these areas and
plan long-term cooperation, research and outreach among the broader Humboldt community related to the
issues of global climate change and urbanization.

Following the 2011 conference in Berlin, we envision a broad range of additional meetings of network
members, continued communication, coordination, and future research collaboration.

We would like to invite you, as an alumnus of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, to join the “Cities
and Climate Change Network” and to participate in the conference and the planned network activities.

If you have already published work that relates to the following thematic areas:
1) Urban risks and consequences of climate change
2) Urban climate change mitigation and adaptation
3) Urban climate governance

Kindly send one or more of your abstracts to Dale Medearis: dmedearis@zedat.fu-berlin.de.

If your work and interests pertain to the interrelated issue of global climate change and urbanization, we
invite you to join the Alexander von Humboldt Cities and Climate Change Network, and we would be very
happy to welcome you at the conference in Berlin this October.

Please send all correspondence or questions related to the network and the conference to
dmedearis@zedat.fu-berlin.de.

With kindest regards,

Prof. Avi Gottlieb Dr. Dale Medearis Nathaniel Scheer
Tel Aviv University Northern Virginia Regional Commission Free University Berlin

Dear Humboldtians,

I am writing to you from the DAAD, the German Academic Exchange Service . The DAAD is a joint organization of the German Universities. The purpose of the DAAD is to promote relations between German universities and comparable institutions abroad, primarily through the exchange of students, academics and researchers.
A striking feature of the academic exchange with North America is the low number of students from the United States and Canada who study in Germany, while those countries are favorite destinations for German students. This imbalance can be recognized especially in the natural sciences. Apparently there is a lack of study abroad offers which are attractive to North American students. Therefore, the DAAD developed a new program – RISE (Research Internships in Science and engineering) – which will enable undergraduate students in biology, chemistry, physics, earth science and Engineering to visit Germany during the summer break and work together with a German Ph.D. student in the respective field. The internship will provide the students with the opportunity to gain a lot of practical and theoretical experiences in research, to experience German university life while visiting Germany and to improve their language skills. The program is supported by the German Botanical Society (DBG), the German Zoological Society (GZS), the German Chemical Society (GDCh), the German Physical Society (DPG), the GeoUnion – Alfred-Wegener-Stiftung and the German Association of Engineers (VDI). Detailed information about the program will be available soon on our website .
We hope that this program is also of interest to the students from your university and we would be grateful if you could inform your undergraduate students about this new opportunity. For your information I enclose as attachments the call for proposals and a little flyer which could be handed out to the students or used as a poster.
The next step will be to check the interest for the new program in Canada and the United States. Interested students should send an e-mail to knieps@daad.de. These students will be included in a distribution list and will be informed by end of January about the available internships. If they are interested in one of the offers they will then have to submit a short application form. The applications will be forwarded to the host laboratories which will select the successful candidates.

I hope that I could raise your interest in our new program and I would be very grateful if you could help us to circulate the information. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further questions.

Sincerely yours

Christian Schaefer