Focus on Technology

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This is the university that invented the electrical engineer. And much more.

The Technische Universität (TU) Darmstadt is one of Germany’s leading technical universities. Its roughly 270 professors, 3,500 employees, and 21,000 students devote their talents and energy to areas of research that will be critical for the future such as energy, mobility, communications and information technologies, and housing and living conditions. The wide variety of disciplines represented are all focused on technology as viewed from the vantage points of engineering, the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences.

  • Economic Disparities and Public Health Correlation

    A study conducted by Martin Karlsson, a health economist at the TU Darmstadt, in collaboration with Lund University, Sweden, indicates that the greater the economic disparity in a country, the worse the state of the health of its population will be. Karlsson’s work differs from earlier, similar studies in that it employed a worldwide database based on surveys conducted in 21 countries.

  • Traffic Management: The Key to Greater Efficiency

    Traffic management is utilized to influence both transport demand and the capacities of transport facilities. The basic prerequisite is the availability of data on traffic flow and local environmental conditions. In the decades to come, the widespread introduction of advanced data-acquisition and communications technologies will provide a much more sophisticated basis for effective traffic management.

  • TU Team Wins the International Solar Decathlon

    It’s not just a dream house, but a dream come true. The student team working with architecture Professor Manfred Hegger of TU Darmstadt built a house that is so energy efficient and attractive that TU Darmstadt won first place in the US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2009 contest in Washington, DC, successfully defending its 2007 title. The 24 young architects, construction engineers, and electrical engineers made up the only German team selected to participate, and they outstripped competition from Spain, Puerto Rico, Canada, and the USA.

  • The Mars Risk

    As a child he was fascinated by The Fantastic Four and the cosmic rays that turned these comic book characters into superheroes. Now, Marco Durante is a professor of solid-state physics at TU Darmstadt and busy investigating these very rays, or beams, and their effects on astronauts at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research.

  • Clean Water for Megacities

    Professor Peter Cornel’s team from TU Darmstadt’s Institute WAR will be presenting the results of their joint interdisciplinary project with Tongji University at the Shanghai World Expo: A “semicentral” approach to municipal water supply, sewage treatment, and refuse disposal. The Institute WAR, in the Department of Civil Engineering, contributes to solving complex environmental problems with research on water supply and groundwater protection, wastewater technology, waste management, industrial material cycles, and environmental planning.

  • TU Darmstadt Excels in Rankings for Technological and Social Science Fields

    Albert Einstein already recommended TU Darmstadt in 1919, stating: “In my opinion you must definitely go to Darmstadt. They have a good Polytechnic School.” Beyond its long-standing renown in the natural sciences and engineering, the TU has achieved an excellent reputation in the social sciences as well.

  • The Secret IT Capital of Europe

    With 12,700 companies in the information technology sector, the metropolitan region around the rivers Rhine, Main, and Neckar already has more IT businesses than Silicon Valley and more IT employees than Bangalore. An ambitious new project will further develop Europe’s biggest software cluster with funding from the German government.

  • Professor Jürgen Rödel Awarded Major Research Prize

    Professor Jürgen Rödel received the esteemed Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize for his research on high-performance ceramics. With a grant of 2.5 million euros, the award is the largest monetary prize awarded for scientific research in Germany.

  • New Initiative to Raise Number of Women Faculty and Researchers at TU

    The Technische Universität Darmstadt has a skeptical view of policies aimed at selectively promoting the interests of women engaged in academic research and favoring women when selecting candidates for top scientific positions. As Professor Dr. Hans Jürgen Prömel, President of the TU Darmstadt, put it, “We have created a special program that has fundamentally changed our appointment policies and will give us more women professors.”