On 12 September 2008, Dr. Andreas and Dr. Thomas Strüngmann founded the Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI). The ESI has the legal form of a “gemeinnützige Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (gGmbH)”, i.e. a non-profit corporation, with the Strüngmann brothers as “Gesellschafter” (partners). To finance the ESI, Dr. Andreas and Dr. Thomas Strüngmann founded the Ernst Strüngmann Foundation (ESF).

ESI’s founding directors are Prof. Wolf Singer and Prof. Pascal Fries. Mid July 2009, Prof. Fries became ESI’s first director and thereby ESI’s current managing (“geschäftsführender”) director. On 1 April 2011, when Prof. Singer assumed emeritus status at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, he joined the ESI as Senior Research Group leader. On 1 October 2011, Dr. Ilka Diester joined the ESI as Research Group leader. Thus, currently, the ESI comprises the department of Prof. Fries (Fries lab), the Senior Research Group of Prof. Singer (Singer lab), the Research Group of Dr. Ilka Diester (Diester lab) and the Research Group of Dr. Michael Schmid (Schmid Lab).

In these pages more information can be found about the benefactors of ESI, the Max Planck Society and the different boards that govern and evaluate ESI.