Picture of Franz Buckert
Picture of Franz Buckert
13 September 2023
Let's Unite! - Get to know Franz Brückert
Picture of Franz Buckert
Franz Brückert is the Unite! Key Liaison Officer for Grenoble INP – UGA. He is also a biology teacher for master students. His research activities are centered around protein-materials interactions, mainly for biomedical applications, such as the stability of biological drugs in pharmaceutical containers, and development of diagnostic assays in portable devices. In his free time, just as many people from Grenoble, he likes skiing, but also walking

Picture of Franz Buckert

Franz Brückert is the Unite! Key Liaison Officer for Grenoble INP – UGA. He is also a biology teacher for master students. His research activities are centered around protein-materials interactions, mainly for biomedical applications, such as the stability of biological drugs in pharmaceutical containers, and development of diagnostic assays in portable devices.
In his free time, just as many people from Grenoble, he likes skiing, but also walking..

13/09/2023

What future Unite! project are you particularly excited about and why do you think it is important
for Unite!'s strategy?

The European Student Card is a great idea, because it will simplify student exchanges. The long term aim is to allow a student from university A to register for a course in university B, attend the courses physically or eventually online, pass the exam and get the mark on his record. This implies creating an organizational structure that allows teachers, students and administrative staff from other universities to easily access our course content, prerequisites, time schedules, and assessment. This increase in direct communication requires giving precise access to each group of people and excellent data protection. This structure needs to be discussed within our university and will be progressively implemented. The same structure could then be proposed to other universities.

What is happening in your Unite! expert community? Anything interesting to share with the Unite! community?

We are preparing for the 2023-24 series of events. We expect to propose many more concrete activities and possibilities to students within Unite!. The participation of teachers and administrative staff will strongly help us. One action under preparation is to spread lab internship proposals within Unite!, thanks to the university website (to host the proposals) and a team of “Student Liaison Officers” who are going to connect students with similar fields of interest in the different universities and make them aware of internships in other universities. 

From your point of view, what is the advantage of working or studying at a Unite! university? What
do you think is special about the Unite! alliance?

The European scientific community is already well organized and already has many ongoing actions and projects that any university can benefit from. Erasmus exchange programs have existed for more than 30 years, and many students from any university already have an international experience thanks to them. 
An alliance brings something else. These are long-term relationships between university members, allowing a better knowledge of each other, which guarantees that we can trust each other to build scientific activity together. It makes it even possible to develop a strategy together, taking advantage of the different socio-economic environments of the regions that host the partner universities.

For instance, sustainable energy, which is one of the common axis of Unite!, is equally important but comes out differently in Germany and Austria (who favour renewable energies, and therefore energy storage), France, Sweden and Finland (who favour nuclear power), Torino and Barcelona (which are interested in fuel production for transportation). Studying or working in an alliance helps realise that Europe is building with a non-uniform model, with complementarities and help from the different regions or countries.




More information about Franz's position within Unite!: 

The Unite! governance assigns clear responsibilities and enables efficient decision-making in managing Unite! at the different levels within the institutions: 

Key Liaison Officers (KLOs) are in charge of the operations in each Unite! partner university. A KLO is mandated by the rector or president of the respective member institution. Thus, KLOs are the main drivers and operational managers of the Unite! partner universities; they are responsible for the progress, implementation of the activities in their universities and communication of the results and opportunities of Unite! into their institutions as broadly as possible. The KLOs meet regularly online or in a hybrid form in the Unite! Steering Committee (USC) to generally steer and coordinate all activities and objectives of the alliance. In order to maintain the close interaction between the alliance activities of Unite! and single institutional activities and objectives, the KLO of each partner internally reports regularly to their president and other members of the top- management and presents – together with the presidents/rectors – the progress of Unite! in internal institutional governance bodies (such as directoire, senate, deans of the schools, advisory boards, student parliament, etc.)