Jessica Strattard Hamilton and Christian Strowa
Transatlantic collaboration is sustained not only by agreements, but by engagement. It is accomplished not only through strategy, but through experience and through personal connections. Its foundations are solid, but should not be taken for granted.
In recent months, we traveled across the United States as part of the German Research and Innovation Tour (GRIT), meeting with university leadership, administrators, policymakers, alumni, and students across the American Southwest, Midwest, and Florida. Our mission: to highlight avenues for collaboration; strengthen the human and institutional ties that underpin transatlantic research partnerships; and cultivate collaboration through institutions and individuals who carry agreements beyond signatures and ceremony into real-world connections.
Coordinated through the German Embassy’s Science,Technology, and Space Section, the tour brings together organizations representing complementary parts of the German science, research and funding continuum, each fulfilling distinct roles in enabling collaboration. The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) advances academic mobility and institutional partnerships; American Friends of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AFAvH) promotes the programs of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH) and activates long-term, people-centered networks rooted in scholarly exchange in the United States; the German Research Foundation (DFG) supports excellent research projects across all disciplines while promoting international collaboration; the German Center for Research and Innovation (DWIH) connects innovation ecosystems across academia, industry, and policy makers; the Max Planck Institutes, FL, contribute world-leading fundamental research expertise and institutional partnership opportunities; and Fraunhofer USA facilitates applied research and industry-facing engagement.
Together, this group creates multiple entry points for collaboration, engaging participants from students through advanced researchers, as well as institutions.
By joining forces, GRIT partners showcase the full range of funding opportunities, expertise, and transatlantic networks that Germany offers. These networks—alumni, fellows, visiting professors, research ambassadors, friends, and partners—frequently serve as bridges across institutional and programmatic boundaries, reinforcing awareness of opportunities and strengthening connections within the broader transatlantic research community.
Across three tours, team GRIT has so far visited a toal of 14 univeristies, research institutions, and stakeholders, including Arizona State University, Michigan State University, Case Western Reserve in Ohio, Purdue University in Indiana, and the University of Florida in Gainesville. Throughout, there was a strong alignment of university focus areas with strategic priorities outlined in Germany’s recently deployed High Tech Agenda, including AI, quantum technologies, microelectronics, and biotechnology. In some cases, strategic partnerships had already been formed. In others, there was a strong interest in exploring further options for collaboration, supported through existing funding schemes and networks, including Germany alumni.
Alumni engagement across the tours revealed a consistent theme: Individuals do not view their affiliations in isolation. Many participate in multiple German funding programs, (e.g., DAAD alumni later become Humboldtians, or Humboldtians are hosted by Max Planck Institutes) and see themselves more broadly as beneficiaries of Germany’s long-standing investment in research and mobility. These networks are cumulative and mutually reinforcing, shaped by shared experience and sustained engagement rather than individual programs alone.
GRIT visits generally follow a consistent structure: strategic discussions with university leadership, funding presentations for campus audiences interested in collaboration with German partners, often including alumni perspectives on transatlantic exchange; and a networking portion that connects current and prospective alumni of German programs. Together, these engagements catalyze collaboration.
These interactions reinforce a consistent pattern in which collaboration increasingly develops through personal, sub-national, and institutional channels. National agreements establish enabling conditions. Sustained partnership emerges through researchers, faculty, students, universities, and regions acting directly.
The recent Joint Declaration of Intent (JDI) between Germany and the State of Florida illustrates this dynamic. Governmental alignment opened space for engagement, while GRIT outreach translated intent into activity by connecting researchers, students, and administrators, giving practical expression to the agreement’s commitments, and demonstrating how sustained engagement brings policy aspirations into lived collaboration.
Investment in human capital is equally critical. GRIT programs emphasize the circulation of talent rather than one-directional exchange, building communities of researchers who maintain life-long collaborations. These networks sustain cooperation long after formal agreements expire and remain among the most reliable drivers of long-term partnerships Science diplomacy is ultimately carried forward through people, trust, and relationships. And it’s role has never been more vital than it is now.
Our recent tours underscored a central lesson: transatlantic collaboration thrives when cultivated through complementary institutional roles, shared priorities, and sustained personal connection. It is not self-sustaining. Budgetary constraints, political uncertainty, and shifting priorities risk narrowing international engagement unless deliberate efforts are made to maintain it.
The work ahead therefore must focus on persistent stewardship rather than invention. It will involve sustaining mobility pipelines, cultivating and activating alumni networks, reinforcing institutional dialogue, and ensuring that collaborative opportunities are visible and accessible. Initiatives like GRIT show that when organizations with distinct but complementary missions act together, collaboration moves from aspiration to implementation.
Transatlantic partnership is formed and sustained through people—those willing to engage, build trust, exchange ideas, and share ambition in confronting global challenges. In the current geopolitical climate, that choice carries particular significance. By cultivating collaboration across institutional, regional, and personal levels, we collectively reinforce relationships essential not only to innovation, but to the resilience of international cooperation.
The GRIT partner organizations have helped shape transatlantic ties for decades, and in some cases for more than a century. These relationships have endured crises before, weathering wars, financial shocks, and the disruptions of the Covid era. This is a moment to reaffirm their value: the contribution of international research partnerships to scientific progress and societal advancement; the benefits of talent circulation and academic exchange, including cultural, social, and economic gains; and the personal connections that emerge through engagement across borders.
These relationships are built not only through institutions, but through experience. Re-discovering one’s own culture by experiencing another, forming lifelong friendships, and maybe even finding love, are all part of the international student and research experience. GRIT will continue to lay the groundwork at the institutional level. At the personal level, sustaining these relationships rests with all of us.
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