Dieter Schwarz Foundation finances 10 additional professorships

TUM Campus Heilbronn expands: "For the Digital Age"

With the theme "For the Digital Age", the expansion of the TUM Heilbronn campus is centered on a significant reinforcement of the fields Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI), including the ability to link with the Heilbronn AI Innovation Park. Here the new focus area "TUM Heilbronn Data Science Center" will be added to the existing focus areas Digital Transformation, Family-Owned Companies and Information Engineering. New tandem project formats will also be set up to reinforce the scientific convergence and formation of synergies with other TUM sites.

Another objective of the expansion measures is to further develop the internationalization of the TUM Heilbronn campus. The new "Dieter Schwarz Fellowship" is to attract excellent international professors to Heilbronn and, as Fellows of the worldwide renowned TUM Institute for Advanced Study (TUM IAS), to build bridges to the TUM Garching campus. The "Dieter Schwarz Courageous Research Grant" will be established to promote bold project ideas. This will give leading international talents in global competition the opportunity to collaborate with TUM in conducting promising "High Risk - High Gain" research projects in the topic complex Digitalization and Sustainability.

Prof. Reinhold Geilsdörfer, Managing Director of DSS, said in Heilbronn: "The past collaboration with TUM has proven to be excellent and especially fertile. The objective of the Dieter Schwarz Foundation is to accompany transformation processes in the Heilbronn region and beyond, to support companies in digital transformation and to promote the talented young individuals needed to do so."

TUM President Prof. Thomas F. Hofmann said: "We appreciate the Dieter Schwarz Foundation as a visionary and reliable partner. Its civil-societal responsibility and its wise structural policy approach to the development of the Heilbronn economic region, with worldwide repercussions, fit perfectly with our pursuit of quality in the education of future-oriented and talented individuals, in research on relevant topics and in the successful design of market-oriented innovation processes."

Prof. Helmut Krcmar, founding dean (2018-2020) and President's representative for the TUM Heilbronn Campus commented: "We are giving a signal that we are maintaining our point of view towards the global impact of our research and that we are interested in utilizing Data Science in addressing truly major concerns. New forms of trans-disciplinary collaboration are being established in the process."

The repeated expansion of the TUM Heilbronn campus is in preparation for the future topic of "Digital Twins". Thus, high-resolution simulations are to enable the representation of real objects and contexts, such as supply chains and whole cities with their public transportation and infrastructure systems. This will make it possible to quickly, digitally and cost-effectively test and adapt measures using the twins before implementing the measures in reality.