Initiative for Excellence

By promoting top-class university research within the framework of the Initiative for Excellence, the Federal Government is aiming to establish internationally visible research beacons in Germany. 1.9 billion Euro will be made available to the institutions of higher education within the framework of the Initiative for Excellence. The Federal Government will contribute 75% of this sum. The evaluations will be implemented by the German Research Association and the Science Council. The final decisions for the first round of funding were published on 13 October 2006. In a second round the drafts for the last phase have meanwhile also been named.

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Initiative for Excellence to Promote Institutions of Higher Education

Specifically, the Initiative for Excellence involves three project-oriented approaches:

• Research Schools for young scientists provide structured PhD programmes within an excellent research environment and a broad area of science. About 40 research schools will each receive one million Euro p.a. on average. A total of 40 million Euro p.a. is available for this area.
• Internationally visible and competitive research and training institutions, so-called Excellence Clusters, are to be established at universities and will cooperate with non-university research institutions, universities of applied sciences and industry. 6.5 million Euro p.a. will be available on average for each of these about 30 clusters, i.e. a total amount of 195 million Euro p. a.
• The promotion of "Future concepts for top-class research at universities" is to heighten the profile of up to ten selected universities.  A precondition for funding is that an institution of higher education should have at least one excellence cluster, one research school and a convincing overall strategy for becoming an internationally recognized so-called "beacon of science". A total of 210 million Euro p.a. has been earmarked for this area. The size of each funding project is to be 21 million Euro on average.

The institutions of higher education are selected by an independent jury (so-called Joint Commission of DFG and Science Council) consisting primarily of scientists from abroad. A total of 1.9 billion Euro will be available up until the year 2011. The Federal Government will contribute 75% of this amount. The selection is made under the direction of the German Research Foundation (DFG), which is supported by the Science Council. Two rounds of funding are envisaged for the period 2005-2011.

The selection is made in two steps. First, a selection is made from the project outlines submitted; those projects selected can then be developed further into a full application. In the first round of funding, the Joint Commission made a selection from 319 project outlines submitted by 74 universities. On 20 January 2006, 90 project outlines of 36 universities were selected and the universities were asked to submit a full project proposal. 39 outlines were evaluated positively under the "Research Schools" funding line, 41 outlines under the "Excellence Clusters" funding line and 10 outlines under the "Future Concepts" funding line. The complete list is available [here].

A comparative evaluation of the outlines took place between June and early August 2006. The announcement of the funding decisions for all three lines of funding took place on 13th October 2006.

The successful universities and their proposals are listed [here].

The Second Round

The second round of funding was published on 10 April 2006. The DFG received declarations of intent for 137 "Research Schools", 145 "Excellence Clusters" and 13 "Future Concepts". The project outlines were to be submitted by 15th September 2006. The project outlines selected were announced on 12th January 2007; 13 April 2007 has been set as deadline for submitting the full applications. The winners of the second round of funding will be announced in October 2007. 

Research Schools

The number of projects are shown in brackets

RWTH Aachen (1)	Universität Heidelberg (3)
Universität Bayreuth (1)	Universität Jena (2)
Freie Universität Berlin (2)	Universität Kiel (1)
Humboldt-Universität Berlin (4)	Universität zu Köln (2)
Universität Bielefeld (1)	Universität Konstanz (2)
Universität Bonn (2)	Universität Leipzig (1)
Universität Bremen (2)	Universität zu Lübeck (1)
Technische Universität Darmstadt (3)	Universität Mainz (3)
Universität Erfurt (1)	Technische Universität München (1)
Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (1)	Universität Münster (1)
Universität Frankfurt/Main (1)	Universität des Saarlandes (1)
Universität Freiburg (2)	Universität Stuttgart (2)
Universität Göttingen (2)	Universität Ulm (1)

Excellence Clusters

The number of projects are shown in brackets

RWTH Aachen (1)	Universität Heidelberg (3)
Universität Bayreuth (1)	Universität Jena (1)
Freie Universität Berlin (3)	Universität Kiel (1)
Humboldt-Universität Berlin (2)	Universität Köln (2)
Technische Universität Berlin (2)	Universität Leipzig (1)
Universität Bielefeld (1)	Universität Mannheim (1)
Ruhr-Universität Bochum (1)	Universität München (1)
Universität Bremen (2)	Technische Universität München (1)
Technische Universität Darmstadt (1)	Universität Münster (2)
Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (1)	Universität Paderborn (1)
Universität Frankfurt/Main (1)	Universität des Saarlandes (1)
Universität Freiburg (3)	Universität Stuttgart (1)
Universität Hamburg (1)	Universität Tübingen (1)
Universität Hannover (2)	Universität Würzburg (1)

Future concepts

RWTH Aachen	Universität Freiburg
Freie Universität Berlin	Universität Göttingen
Humboldt-Universität Berlin	Universität Heidelberg
Universität Bochum	Universität Konstanz

The Initiative is part of the Innovation Campaign for state-funded science, which also includes the "Pact for Research and Innovation".

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