Just in time for the deadline on 21st February 2018, the University of Stuttgart submitted four substantial packages to the German Research Association (DFG) in Bonn: the full proposals for the excellence clusters for which the University may apply in the framework of the excellence strategy decided by the federal and state governments to strengthen cutting edge research in Germany. Included in the package was the binding declaration of intent stating that the University of Stuttgart would also submit a proposal in the new funding line “University of Excellence” in December.
The Rector of the University of Stuttgart, Professor Dr Wolfram Ressel, is confident in spite of the exceptionally hard competition: “The positive evaluation alone of four draft proposals by the expert panel in September last year was a particular achievement for the University of Stuttgart and a further milestone on the path to excellence. Today I would like to take this opportunity of thanking all colleagues for their great commitment in preparing the full proposals.“
The four cluster proposals underline the expertise of the University of Stuttgart thematically in central research fields that are subsumed programmatically following the maxim “Intelligent Systems for a Sustainable Society“:
In view of the large amount of data that is available today from sensor measurements, data collections, experiments and simulations, the Excellence Cluster Data-Integrated Simulation Sciences is targeting a new class of approaches that raise the applicability and accuracy of simulations as well as the reliability of decisions based on this to a new level. In the Excellence Cluster ”Quantum Sciences from the Foundations to Application: Development of Quantum Instruments of the Future“ researchers associate quantum technology with the engineering sciences and transfer results from basic research to practice. The universities of Stuttgart and Ulm as well as the Max Planck-Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart are involved.
The Excellence Cluster Integrative Computer-Based Planning and Construction for Architecture builds on the full potential of digital technologies in order to rethink planning and construction and to enable pioneering innovations for constructing through a systematic, holistic and integrative computer-based approach. And the Excellence Cluster “Understand Understanding. Language and Text“ is to search for new approaches in order to better understand what happens when we (do not) understand language and text. Scientists from the universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen as well as the German Literature Archive (DLA) Marbach and the Leibniz Institute for Knowledge Media Tübingen (IWM) are jointly dedicating themselves to these questions.