Engineers ranked first place in Bavaria for acquisition of third-party funding
New DFG Funding Atlas confirms top rankings
FAU is among the universities in Germany that receive the highest amounts of third-party funding from research funding organisations and government ministries, especially in the field of engineering. FAU is ranked first in Bavaria in this respect. These are the findings of the 2018 Funding Atlas that the German Research Foundation (DFG) has now published. The Department of Materials Science and Engineering at FAU ranked first in Germany for its efforts in acquiring third-party funding. FAU gained eleventh place in the overall ranking of the best research universities.
Researchers at FAU secured around 217.1 million euros of third-party funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) between 2014 and 2016, which is the reporting period for the 2018 Funding Atlas. The total sum of funding received by the university remained stable compared with the previous funding period. ‘FAU has retained its top position at eleventh place in the overall ranking of German universities, despite the fact that it is the only one in the top 12 not to receive any long-term institutional funding from the Excellence Initiative,’ explains Prof. Dr. Kathrin Möslein, Vice President Outreach. ‘This demonstrates that, at FAU, we tackle relevant research topics, find innovative approaches and generate results that are respected around the world and make a convincing case to sponsors from both the public sector and industry,’ she adds.
Engineering at FAU ranked second place in Germany
Engineering at FAU is one area of science which is particularly successful. Research projects in this sector received around 86.4 million euros of funding between 2014 and 2016. ‘At a national level, this means FAU is ranked second behind RWTH Aachen and has thus moved up one place compared to the period between 2011 and 2014. If we look at the amount of funding acquired on average per professorship, FAU ranks first in Germany,’ explains Möslein.
Top ranking for materials science and engineering
When comparing individual subject areas, materials science and engineering at FAU ranked first place in Germany with 25.9 million euros. Chemistry scored highly, ranking at third place with 20.3 million euros, as did mechanical engineering and production technology, which was also ranked at third place with 23.2 million euros. Thermodynamics/process engineering at FAU ranked fifth with 13.8 million euros of funding and within the specialisation of process engineering and technical chemistry, the FAU department of Chemical and Biological Engineering ranked first with 12 million euros. In addition to engineering subjects, FAU is also very successful in research areas relating to microbiology, virology and immunology with 22.8 million euros of funding.
Further information:
Contact for the press
Prof. Dr. Kathrin Möslein
Phone +49 9131 8529313
kathrin.moeslein@fau.de