The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science is the largest research organization outside the universities. Its more than 60 facilities in the old federal states are largely financed from public funds. It is developing further establishments in the new states. The Max Planck Society engages in basic research which either is not conducted by the higher education institutions or requires particularly large facilities.
The 16 national research centers are another important instrument of government research policy. They receive 90 percent of their funds from the Federation (Federal Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Technology) and ten percent from the government of the respective state in which they are located. Their fields of research range from microparticles and aerospace to cancer, environmental and climate research.

1970 marked the founding oi the Association of National Research Centres, which on the occasion of its 25th anniversary in November 1995 was renamed the Helmholtz Association of National Research Centres. The following are some of the goals it has set itself for the future:

£>to contribute to securing an energy supply which utilizes politically controversial energy sources as well as solar energy and other alternative energy sources;
}>to conduct research conducive to an environment which is not merely “cleaned up", or made “clean” again, but which is not impaired by pollutants in the first place;
>to improve diagnosis and treatment of illnesses such as heart disease, circulatory disorders, cancer and AIDS, where the great breakthrough, however, is yet to be made; and
J>to develop new large-scale physicotechnical equipment to explore the microcosmos.