Company Profile Portrait University of Kaiserslautern www.uni-kl.de Special networks link the engineering and natural sciences with the social and economic sciences and distinguish the University of Kaiserslautern as the only university in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate with a strong orientation on technology. It consists of 12 departments and offers over 100 courses of study to 14,200 students. The University of Kaiserslautern is renowned for its excellence in research and higher education. In the federal government’s “Excellence in Higher Education” competition, the University of Kaiserslautern was recognized as one of the six Top-Universities in Germany. This award is solid proof of the high educational standards at the university. In January 2010, the university became a double winner as it was selected, together with team partners IESE, ITWM, DFKI, and ITA, as one of five world-class research clusters by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The University of Kaiserslautern has built a reputation for excellence in some disciplines which has also attracted international attention. For example, there are four major institutes working in the area of applied mathematics and computer sciences. These include: two Fraunhofer Institutes (the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics (ITWM) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE)), the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), and the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems. Other satellite institutes include: the Institute for Surface and Film Analysis (IFOS) in the field of physics, laser physics, and materials research; and, the Institute for Composites (IVW), which conducts research in the areas of mechanical engineering, composite materials and process engineering. Kaiserslautern is recognized as one of the largest IT clusters in all of Europe. The University of Kaiserslautern is also home to two State Research Centers (Center for Mathematical and Computational Modeling, (CM)², http://cmcm.uni-kl.de) and Center for Optics and Material Sciences (OPTIMAS, http://optimas.uni-kl.de). Their objective is to set up large, collaborative research projects, e.g., special research areas, and successfully compete for national and international projects within the framework of funding for the Excellence Initiative. Collaborative Research Centers SFB Transregio 49: Condensed Matter Systems with Variable Many-Body Interactions, www.tr49.de SFB Transregio 88: Cooperative effects in homo- and heterometallic complexes (3MET), www.uni-kl.de/3met SFB 926: Component surfaces: Morphology on a micro scale, www.sfb926.de State Research Units: Advanced Materials Engineering (AME) , www.uni-kl.de/ame Ambient Systems – Technologies and Applications (AmSys) , www.amsys-uni-kl.de Membrane Transport: From Molecular Principles to Physiological Relevance (Membrane Transport) , www.uni-kl.de/rimb Nanostructured Catalysts for an Efficient Use of Raw Materials (NanoKat) , www.chemie.uni-kl.de/nanokat Sustainable Resource Conservation in Civil Engineering, Urbanism and Economy (RESCUE) , www.uni-kl.de/rescue Region and City, www.uni-kl.de/region-und-stadt State Technology Research Unit: Center for Commercial Vehicle Technology (ZNT) , www.uni-kl.de/znt Science Alliance Kaiserslautern e.V. The Science Alliance Kaiserslautern e.V. is a coalition of eleven internationally renowned research facilities in Kaiserslautern. Together they form a highly specialized multidisciplinary network that provides students, scientists and cooperation partners from industry, economy and administration with innovative solutions based on the newest technologies and methods available. Members of the Science Alliance are the University of Kaiserslautern, the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern, and nine research institutes, some of which are spin-offs of successful research completed at the University of Kaiserslautern. Their prolific work in the past years has added to the growing reputation of Kaiserslautern as a distinguished location for study, research, and technology. www.science-alliance.de