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Berlin/Cottbus – The Medical University of Lausitz – Carl Thiem (MUL) in Cottbus, founded at the beginning of July, is taking shape. After the Carl Thiem Clinic changed from municipal to state ownership on July 1, the first state medical faculty in the state of Brandenburg has now started advertising for new professorships. The aim is to enroll the first medical students in Cottbus in the winter semester of 2026/27.

“We have just advertised the first four vacant clinical professorships. They will be followed by procedures for habilitated colleagues from the MUL itself and, at the same time, advertisements for the professorships that must be filled by the start of the study,” said Adelheid Kuhlmey, founding head of science at the MUL, to the German Medical Journal.

In addition, professorships would need to be filled that could provide basic medical training in physiology, biochemistry and anatomy, according to the gerontologist, health services researcher and former vice dean for studies and teaching at the Charité University Medicine Berlin.

Kuhlmey has taken the lead in setting up an academic administration for research and teaching, appointing the necessary professors, designing the curriculum and providing teaching capacity and laboratory space for future students for the next few years.

In order to be successful, it is now necessary to attract or retain “smart minds with high motivation and research expertise” to Cottbus, she said.

When fully developed, the MUL plans to offer 200 medical study places per year. In total, around 1,200 young people will be able to study medicine in Cottbus in the future. To achieve this, more than 1,300 research and teaching positions will have to be filled by 2035, including 80 professorships.

More than half of the costs for building up university medicine by 2038 – a total of around 3.7 billion euros – will be borne by the federal government as part of the Structural Strengthening Act for Coal Regions. The state of Brandenburg is contributing 1.8 billion euros.

The entire German health care system is also set to benefit from this investment: in addition to numerous clinical professorships, professorships in the two research areas of the new medical university will soon be advertised, following the recommendations of the Science Council, Kuhlmey continued.

The focus of the MUL will be on health system research and the digitization of the health care system. In addition to strengthening health care in the former coal region of Lusatia in the sense of a “Lusatia Health Model Region” and training new doctors for the state of Brandenburg, research in these two areas will also contribute to the modernization of the health system throughout Germany.

In Cottbus, emphasis will also be placed on modern teaching, strengthening general medicine and interprofessionalism in medicine. “In order to raise the profile of our teaching, we need a position in medical didactics and teaching research as well as a quick advertisement in the field of general medicine,” said Kuhlmey.

“We are placing a focus on medicine for older and old age with a view to the population structure in Lusatia and, in expanding the curriculum, we are following the recommendations of the Science Council to closely interweave the two research focuses of digitization of health care and health system research into the curriculum,” she explained.

The schedule for the planned start of the first medical students in Cottbus is tight: Despite all the pressure felt in terms of staffing for teaching and research, the highest priority is given to the professional and scientific excellence of the applicants, says Kuhlmey. “We want them to have teaching skills and be willing to work for interprofessional training for all health professions,” emphasized the founding head of science at MUL. © ER/aerzteblatt.de