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On May 22, 2025, the Excellence Commission announced its decisions for the first funding line of the Excellence Strategy. The two selected clusters will each receive up to 70 million euros in funding over a period of seven years. This also significantly enhances KIT’s prospects of continuing to hold the title of Excellence University.

In the Cluster of Excellence “Post Lithium Storage” (POLiS), KIT is working together with the universities of Gießen and Ulm on groundbreaking solutions for electrochemical energy storage. The Cluster of Excellence “3D Matter Made to Order” (3DMM2O), in collaboration with Heidelberg University, focuses on innovative 3D printing technologies at the smallest scales.

MWK

Together with the Universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen, KIT is establishing a pioneering State Graduate Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence (LGZ) in Heilbronn. On May 8, 2025, the starting signal was given for this unique nationwide project. The LGZ will be set up as an external site of the KIT and is intended to boost the training of specialists in AI-related future fields such as chip design, robotics and cyber security.

The center is due to be completed in 2029 and will then receive up to 30 million euros in annual funding from the state. In addition to ten professors, more than 60 doctoral students and around 20 postdocs will conduct research at the Graduate Center.

Nadine Rönnau

The Helmholtz Association is financing the constructionof this test platform as part of the Energy Lab with funds for strategic development funding. The aim of this globally unique research environment is to research the system behavior of new types of grid operating equipment such as power converters for medium-voltage direct current grids in a grid environment that is as realistic as possible.

At KIT, the overall project involves the Institute of Electrical Engineering (ETI) along with several other institutes from various disciplines. The project brings together research institutions and industry partners to accelerate the transfer of scientific insights into practical applications.

Amadeus Bramsiepe, KIT

Funded as a Reinhart Koselleck project by the German Research Foundation (DFG), Veit Hagenmeyer (KIT) and Klaus Stierstorfer (University of Münster) are questioning modeling practices in order to strengthen transparency, participation and inclusion in the transformation of the energy system. The aim of the project is to reveal the hidden mechanisms of modeling and to work out which narrative patterns are hidden in energy transition models. In addition, new ways shall be found to make energy transition models more transparent, participatory and inclusive. The project is funded with one million euros over a period of five years.

Marco Schilling

Stefanie Dehnen, Professor of Information-Based Materials Design and Nanoscience and Professor of Inorganic Chemistry, has been awarded one of the two Hector Science Awards for 2024, endowed with €150,000. The Hector Foundation jury recognized Dehnen's contributions to the chemistry of cluster compounds and their utilization in materials science. In doing so, the researcher has made discoveries that have gained much international attention and are being further pursued worldwide. / 01.2025

ERC, DFG

A rising number of leaders of highly competitive third-party funded junior research groups choose the KIT as their host institution. In the past three years, 10 or more groups were acquired for the KIT each year, which is twice as much as the annual average in the preceding years. Besides promoting the research careers of junior researchers, this also diversifies the research profile of KIT. A crucial factor in this development is the early international recruitment of the best postdoctoral researchers via KIT’s Young Investigator Group Preparation Program. The junior research groups acquired in 2024 include a total of five groups in the Emmy Noether Program of the German Research Foundation (DFG), four Helmholtz Investigator Groups and one Nexus group of the Carl Zeiss Foundation.