The shell of the new building for the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM) has been completed. Work on the new four-storey office wing with laboratories and a large hall for up to 160 scientists on the campus of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) only began in December 2013. “The building stands in a prominent urban location that appropriately emphasizes its importance for the research landscape of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. The new building has a main usable area of around 3,600 square meters. The pure construction costs of the new building amount to EUR 26.82 million, plus the costs for the initial furnishings and the large scientific installations, around EUR 35 million will be invested,” explained Rhineland-Palatinate Finance Minister Dr. Carsten Kühl on the occasion of the topping-out ceremony.

“The establishment of a Helmholtz Institute on the Gutenberg Campus means a sustainable strengthening of our cutting-edge research in nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, especially in cooperation with the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt,” said the President of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Prof. Dr. Georg Krausch. “This contributes to the further sharpening of our research profile – both nationally and internationally. The Helmholtz Institute Mainz is also a strong strategic partner in the university’s cluster of excellence ‘Precision Physics, Fundamental Interactions and Structure of Matter’, or PRISMA for short.”

“The Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM) combines the best of two worlds: the intellectual strength of a research university and the technical capabilities of a national research center,” emphasizes the Managing Director of HIM, Prof. Dr. Frank Maas. “FAIR is one of the world’s largest research projects in basic physics research. The accelerator facility will deliver antiproton and ion beams of unprecedented intensity and quality, enabling an unprecedented variety of experiments that researchers hope will provide new insights into the structure of matter and the development of the universe from the Big Bang to the present day. The aim is to better understand the reactions of antimatter and thus explore the structure of the matter that surrounds us. The new building with its highly specialized laboratories, high-performance computing and a large-scale pilot plant provides an excellent infrastructure for this.”

The Helmholtz Institute Mainz, founded in 2009, is a research institute in the field of nuclear, particle, atomic and accelerator physics. It consists of a branch of a Helmholtz Center and a German university. Here, the outstanding expertise of the experimental and theoretical groups at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in the field of nuclear, particle and accelerator physics is to be linked even more closely and permanently with the globally unique accelerator facility of the national large-scale research facility of the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research GmbH in Darmstadt.

In 2012, the German Council of Science and Humanities confirmed HIM’s national and scientific excellence by approving funding for a research building. The research building, which is scheduled for completion in late summer 2015, will offer the six interdisciplinary research sections an environment conducive to cooperation. The research building will be funded equally by the federal government and the state of Rhineland-Palatinate and, in addition to office and conference rooms, will include highly specialized laboratories, high-performance computing and a large technical center for the assembly of accelerator components and detectors.

The precise understanding of the strong interaction in the standard model of physics is the common research goal of the six sections of the Helmholtz Institute Mainz. HIM scientists are playing a key role in the development and construction of the international accelerator facility FAIR – “Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research” – in Darmstadt. Unique opportunities for precision experiments are being created there.

The Helmholtz Institute Mainz is financed by the federal and state governments, with the federal government covering 90 percent of the running costs and the state of Rhineland-Palatinate the remaining ten percent. Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz contributes technical infrastructure, academic and technical staff and overheads such as energy costs in roughly the same amount. As a result, the institute has an annual budget of around ten million euros.