Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) will go into the final round of the Excellence Initiative II with three new and three follow-up proposals. Apart from the follow-up proposals for the German Research Foundation (DFG) Center for Functional Nanostructures, the Karlsruhe School of Optics & Photonics, and the Concept for the Future, KIT has been invited to submit the following full proposals in the final round: Graduate Schools for the Promotion of Young Scientists The "Karlsruhe School of Informatics Engineering" – an initiative of the KIT COMMputation Focus. KSIE pursues a highly interdisciplinary approach. The young scientists will concentrate in particular on the interactions of informatics and other engineering disciplines. Informatics engineering is understood to be the exchange of principles, methods and modeling approaches by the disciplines involved. Apart from informatics, these are mainly electrical engineering and mechanical engineering, but also economic engineering. KIT, with three new proposals, is in the final round of the Excellence Initiative II. (Image: KIT) The Graduate School "Elementary Particle and Astroparticle Physics: Science and Technology" – a central component of the KIT Center KCETA. Doctoral students from various disciplines will jointly work and conduct research on large-scale facilities of elementary particle and astroparticle physics. In this way, the PhD students are integrated into international teams from the very beginning of their work. Clusters of Excellence for the Promotion of Top Research The initiative "Dependable Software for Critical Infrastructures" – combines activities of the KIT COMMputation Focus with those of the KIT Energy and Mobility Systems Centers. The research cluster is aimed at developing dependable software for so-called virtualized, i.e. decentralized, self-organized and adaptable infrastructures. In complex areas like energy, transport and electronic data processing, this is crucial to minimize errors and failure risks and to optimize functional systems important to society. “KIT considers the competition under the Excellence Initiative II a big incentive. This is also reflected by the high commitment of our scientists and service units to the proposals of graduate schools and clusters of excellence submitted so far,” said Horst Hippler and Eberhard Umbach, KIT presidents. “It is good that we have now been invited to submit three full proposals. This is a big success for KIT. The decision of the reviewers clearly shows that KIT picks up on research, teaching and innovation topics of high relevance to the future and that the synergies resulting from the merger have become visible already.” This second phase of the Excellence Initiative was agreed upon in June 2009 by the German federal government and the states. It is the continuation of the first phase of the Excellence Initiative in which a total of 85 institutions – 39 graduate schools, 37 clusters of excellence and nine institutional strategies – have been funded since 2006/2007. Compared with the first phase of the competition, the funding has been significantly increased from 1.9 billion euros to more than 2.7 billion euros. In addition, more flexible funding amounts have been agreed on for the second phase. Graduate schools will receive between 1 million and 2.5 million euros of funding per year, clusters of excellence between 3 million and 8 million euros. As for institutional strategies, more emphasis will be given to elements of research-related teaching. For more information, visit: www.dfg.de