High quality training, the promotion of talents, and excellence in science and research are necessary to secure future opportunities for the young generation worldwide. The close interlinkage between industry and higher education, between theory and practice, which is being pursued in the MARA project makes an important contribution to this. Only when innovations from the hotbeds of talent at universities find their way into practice will applied research have achieved its aim.

The future will strongly depend on how well we manage to build this bridge. I hope that there will be many such bridges in future. MARA is taking an international path, for example in the Anglo-American as well as the Latin American regions, with which Germany has traditionally had close ties. I was delighted to see MARA's success in Argentina in 2005. It is therefore a great pleasure for me to become patron of MARA in Germany this year.

I wish the project all the best for the future, and continued success in the development of its activities.

Research is a key driver of innovation and growth - for individual countries, the EU and every other region of the world. Building research bridges between academia and practice, as the project MARA does, will make a major contribution to safeguarding our future prosperity, wherever we may live. To bring together young research students, academics as well as experienced practitioners seems to me a promising way to facilitate knowledge exchange for the benefit both for practitioners and scientists.

MARA will not only build bridges between science and practice, but between countries as well. Indeed, MARA highlights the close bond which exists between Germany and the UK. It is especially welcome to see young researchers and young professionals advancing an Anglo-German initiative like MARA. To take on responsibility to contribute to the advancement of science and society is an important and valuable contribution of the MARA team.

News of MARA's success in Argentina reached me long before I learned about this year's initiative. Therefore, I am particularly pleased to take on the Patronage of this far-reaching project.

I wish the MARA team renewed success here in Germany.

Deutsche Bahn AG is a modern, diversified company that strives for providing complete and excellent mobility and logistics solutions. Over the past few years, the Deutsche Bahn Group has developed, step by step, into a leading international mobility and logistics services provider. Consequently, the focus of our company- and our HR strategy - is on internationalizing our employees and our decision-making processes.

How do we benefit from working with MARA? MARA with its global partners, as the London School of Economics and Political Science, allows us - as a worldwide acting company - to benefit from a unique academic approach for proving, reviewing and evaluating complex decision processes. In other words, MARA offers us the opportunity of using a vital bridge between international science and practical experience to analyze our integral projects.

MARA's interesting and impressive decision-making tools intrigued us.

Therefore we at Deutsche Bahn AG decided to analyze and rate three of our key strategic projects together with MARA. We are very confident of triggering fruitful discussions and receiving excellent results and we are pleased that we had the opportunity of working with the MARA team.

"I am happy to support the Mara project for a second year. The first year, in Argentina, was clearly very successful and I very much hope that it can be repeated in Germany in 2006. It is a good example, of practical cooperation between researchers in academia and business. The aim is to adapt decision analysis methodologies developed in universities to real-world business problems, with the overall aim of enhancing productivity, an aim clearly shared between the UK and Germany."