On April 5, 2010 ZEF director Solvay Gerke signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the University Sains Malaysia. On the picture from left to right: Professor Azhari Abdul Karim, director of the Center for International Relations and Policy (CenPRIS), Professor Dzulkifli Abdul Razak, Rector of the University Sains Malaysia, and Professor Gerke.

Hart Feuer, a PhD student from the US in ZEF’s department of Ecology and Natural Resources Management, is currently doing his field research in Cambodia. Hart’s research focus is on the “Dynamics of ecological modernization embedded in pre-industrial socio-technical evolution”. If you want to know what this means and is all about – then read his blog!

March 22 is World Water Day. This year's overall theme is Water Quality. Water use is one of ZEF's strategic research topics. The Center is involved in water related research in Uzbekistan, Vietnam, South Africa, Ethiopia and West Africa.

Read the latest ZEF news of March 2010 and learn more about: A ZEF/CARE study on how to cope locally with global climate change, modeling crops and water use in Khorezm (Uzbekistan) and knowledge transfer in West Africa. The issue also includes a report of a ZEF PhD student from her field research in Zimbabwe and an interview with Prof. von Braun, ZEF Director.

ZEF is pleased to announce that in the just published 2010 Handelsblatt list of the top Professors of Economics in the German-speaking world, Professor Oded Stark, a Senior Research Fellow of ZEF, is listed among the top ten (including number one in Austria, and number two in Germany).

The Top "To Go To Think Tanks" ranking is a yearly published list of selected Think Tanks from all over the world covering different areas of expertise such as Health, Environment, Security and International Affairs. In the 2009 "To Go To Think Tanks" ranking, ZEF is under the top 5% of more than 6,000 worldwide evaluated Think Tanks in 169 countries. It is on position 6 among the Top 10 of Science and Technology Think Tanks.

Watch now ZEF's new information movie on its doctoral program! The movie "Capacity Development for the Developing World" gives you an overview of ZEF's Bonn Interdisciplinary Graduate School (BiGS-DR). You can watch a short and long English version of the movie here.

Interview with Dr. Edward Nketiah-Amponsah, an economist from Ghana, who did his PhD research at ZEF on the public health system in his home country from October 2006 until January 2010. The topic of his doctoral research was: Economic analysis of under-five morbidity, mortality and health seeking behaviour - evidence from Ghana.

Interview with Professor Joachim von Braun, former and new director of ZEF's Department of Economic and Technological Change. From 2002-2009 he was director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI, based in Washington DC, USA). Prof. von Braun was director at ZEF 1997-2002. Read the interview with him: