Excellence Clusters

  Peter Winandy  

Optimism after the Site Visit by the German Council of Science and Humanities

RWTH will be kept in suspense until June 15

After the site visit by an international team of reviewers on January 10-11, 2012, all those involved in the University's Excellence-related activities are pleased with the process. During the visit, the review team intensively and critically assessed the University's new Institutional Stragety. Thus the evaluation process for the renewal application in the third funding line of the Excellence Initiative is now complete.

The assessment process for the other funding lines - Graduate Schools and Clusters of Excellence - has also been completed. RWTH Rector Ernst Schmachtenberg is confident that the Institutional Strategy "RWTH 2020: Meeting Global Challenges. The Integrated Interdisciplinary University of Technology" represents a good renewal application, and that the site visit was very engaging and took place in a good atmosphere. The desicion is now in the hands of the team of reviewers - the decision on which universities will finally succeed will be made and published by a joint committee from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Council of Sciences and Humanities (WR) on June 15.

A large number of actors were involved in the site visit and preparations leading up to it - apart from professors, faculty deans, the Rectorate, and the members of the Strategy Board, the Senate, and the Board of Governors,  many of the University's partners and several students played an important role in this process.

With the help of its new Institutional Strategy, RWTH Aachen sets out to become one of the leading integrated, interdisciplinary universities of technology worldwide. This process of continual change was started in 2007, with the first phase of the Excellence Initiative and the first version of the Institutional Strategy. 

Considerable effort went into the comprehensive renewal application for the third funding line (Institutional Strategies) that was submitted on September 1, 2011. For this application, representatives from all groups of the University had developed concepts that, after intense discussions and negotatiations, made their way into the Institutional Strategy, which demonstrates the ways in which RWTH Aachen will address the global challenges of our time: in the second funding period between 2012 and 2017, the University plans to invest about 78 million Euros into "excellent" projects.   

In March 2011, RWTH had succeeded in the preliminary selection process for the second stage of the Excellence Initiative. The German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Council of Science and Humanities (WR) approved RWTH’s draft proposals and invited the University to submit full proposals for the establishment of three further institutions:

• JARA-FIT Graduate School "Fundamentals of Future Information Technology"
  The graduate school is to be established in the context of the Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance (JARA), a joint venture between Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen University.
• Mobile Multimedia Graduate School (M3)
• Cluster of Excellence "Sustainable Buildings of the Future - Meeting Energy and Demographic Challenges"

Also, RWTH will apply for continued funding for the following projects already approved in the first phase of the Excellence Initiative:

• The Institutional Strategy "RWTH 2020: Meeting Global Challenges"
• The Graduate School Aachen Institute for Advanced Study in Computational Engineering Science (AICES)
• The Clusters of Excellence Ultra High-Speed Mobile Information and Communication (UMIC), Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries, and Tailor-Made Fuels from Biomass (TMFB).

RWTH Aachen University succeeded in all three categories ("funding lines") of the Initiative for Excellence by the German federal and state governments. Thus RWTH receives funding for a graduate school, three clusters of excellence, and the implementation of its institutional strategy. This significant financial support gives RWTH the unique opportunity to enhance its scientific profile and further develop its core competencies, making it possible for RWTH to conduct top-level research and to significantly enhance its international reputation. Today, first and foremost, RWTH is a highly recognized engineering institution. Under the guidance of its new institutional strategy, which seeks to more fully integrate hitherto coexisting areas of excellence, RWTH will develop into a truly integrated, interdisciplinary technical university which is well-prepared to address the key global challenges of our time.