The Rhine-Main universities of Frankfurt, Darmstadt and Mainz will be able to call themselves universities of excellence from January 1, 2027. This is the result of the latest round of the Excellence Strategy, the competition initiated by the federal and state governments to promote top research at universities. However, the joint application by the universities of Giessen and Marburg for the title of excellence was unsuccessful. On Friday afternoon, the Science Council and the German Research Foundation in Bonn announced which universities and university associations would be allowed to use the award of excellence in the future.
The award comes with high financial support. As the science ministries of Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate announced, the Rhine-Main universities will receive a total of up to 155 million euros over a period of seven years. 75 percent of this sum comes from the federal government, the rest is contributed by the federal states in which the funded universities are based. In total, five universities or university associations will be financed in the new edition of the “Universities of Excellence” funding line; In addition to the Rhine-Main universities, these are the universities of Jena, Freiburg and Cologne as well as the “Ruhr Innovation Lab” at the University of Bochum and the TU Dortmund. Eleven new applications were submitted.
Hesse's Science Minister Timon Gremmels (SPD) called the competition success “historic”. For the first time, Hessian universities and a cross-university association would be honored in this way. “This is good for the Rhine-Main area and for Hesse.” Prime Minister Boris Rhein (CDU) said the title was proof of the high quality, innovative strength and strategic skill of the local research institutions. The Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Gordon Schnieder (CDU), pointed out that not only research and young academics benefit from funding for excellence, but also the state as a location for innovation and business.
Gremmels assured the universities of Gießen and Marburg that their application was not successful despite the “very high quality” and that it would provide “further support”. The Central Hesse university association is a “center of international cutting-edge research” and an “innovation engine for Hesse”.
The ministries emphasize that the competition experts recognized the cross-border cooperation between the three universities as exemplary for the whole of Germany. The selection process was “science-led”. State or regional proportions would therefore have played no role. The decision as to which universities would receive funding was made by a commission with 39 international scientists and the federal and state science ministers.
The universities of Frankfurt, Darmstadt and Mainz had already formed a strategic alliance before their joint application. Together they have more than 90,000 students and 1,500 professorships. In the four profile areas of “Data”, “Health”, “Matter” and “Society”, the universities pool their expertise in these fields and create joint study programs.
The application with which the Rhine-Main universities have now been successful is entitled “RMU-EXCITE – Excellent. Collaborative. Transformative”. As the Goethe University reports, the universities want to pursue three interrelated strategic goals by 2033: the promotion of “strong, synergistic disciplines”, the empowerment of a new generation of scientists to make an “essential contribution to the future of research and society”, and the “joint design of sustainable transformation”. The Alliance of Rhine-Main Universities should become a leading international center for cutting-edge research that “develops groundbreaking answers to complex scientific and social challenges.”
The universities of Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Giessen, Marburg and Mainz qualified for the competition for the title of excellence last year after they were approved for a total of seven top research associations, so-called clusters of excellence. Scientists deal with particle physics, artificial intelligence, cardiopulmonary diseases, perception psychology, cell biology, microorganisms that affect the climate and new forms of energy storage.
