Overview - Introduction to research activities at Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH)

TUHH, founded in 1978 in the southern part of Hamburg, is one of Germany’s youngest universities of technology. It was founded as an independent university specialized in the “classic” engineering sciences. TUHH’s principal tasks and objectives are characterized by first-class teaching, excellent research at a high international level, as well as an intensive knowledge and technology transfer in the field of engineering.

2005 an extensive future- and competition-oriented research initiative on the TUHH campus was started. Our objective was and continues to be to intensify and develop appropriate activities across departments and in all faculties and institutes. Every year around 90 young people successfully complete their research work with a PhD at the TUHH.

Research must, however, be undertaken cooperatively across departmental borders. A university’s reputation depends to a very large extent on its research alliances with, for example special research divisions of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and research projects funded by the European Commission (EU) or the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

TUHH developed “bottom up” joint, cross-departmental research projects in the form of research centers (RCs). The RCs that have been set up are organized in a matrix-like structure. Each is headed by two colleagues and involves the detailed contributions of 10 to 15 colleagues. Work in an RC is voluntary, and every professor is free to work in one or more RCs.

Each RC undertakes to deliver a certain level of performance based on criteria that can readily be tested within the four-year project period. Applications are discussed by the Board of Governors and submitted to the Academic Senate for a final decision on whether to set up an RC. Every RC reports regularly to the Academic Senate on the results it has achieved. The following eight RCs have been developed, were evaluated by peers in the meantime and prolongated:

• Integrated Biotechnology and Process Engineering
  (Andreas Liese, Michael Schlüter)

• Regeneration, Implants, Medical Technology
  (Wolfgang Krautschneider, Ralf Pörtner)

• Self-Organizing Mobile Sensor and Radio Data Transmission Networks
  (Volker Turau, Hermann Rohling)

• On- and Offshore Civil Engineering Structures
  (Frank Schmidt-Döhl, Viktor Sigrist)

• Maritime Systems
  (Stefan Krüger, Moustafa Abdel-Maksoud)

• Climate Protecting Energy- and Environmental Engineering
  (Ralf Otterpohl, Gerhard Schmitz)

• Aeronautics
  (Otto von Estorff, Frank Thielecke)

• Product-Oriented Materials Development
  (Gerold Schneider, Karl Schulte)

This research initiative will improve TUHH`s already very good position in competition with other universities. The extensive experience and existing facilities of the departments are being bundled with a view to the future to give the TUHH a clear profile in important research areas, a profile derived from its own strength. In a next step there is now the challenge to shape RC`s competencies in the fields of Green Technologies, Life Science Technologies and Transportation Technologies and Logistics.

More competition leads to a change in behavior. The vision is to position the TUHH with its proven track record in its areas of scientific research as an important player in the concert of universities of technology in Germany by focusing on RCs.

The TUHH is active in the different areas of both basic and application-related research and collaborates closely with companies in the Hamburg metropolitan region. Cases in point are its cooperation in aviation research at the Finkenwerder Technology Center with AIRBUS or collaboration with the Helmholtz-Zentrum Centre Geesthacht for Materials and Coastal Research, the German Aerospace Research Center (DLR), or the DESY Research Center in Hamburg.

The TUHH’s founding principles – research priority, interdisciplinarity, innovation, regionality, and internationality – continue to be binding basics for the future development of our fine University of Technology.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jürgen Grabe
– Vice-President Research –