With an acquired funding amount of almost EUR 46 million, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is currently the most successful German university under Horizon 2020, the EU framework program for research and innovation. This is the result of the first Monitoring Report on this program issued by the EU Commission. KIT is ranked no. 8 among the 50 best higher and secondary education (HES) institutions. Featuring among the universities in this report, KIT would also have scored well in comparison with the 50 best research (REC) organizations. Here, KIT would have been no. 7, again being the top German institution.
The deadline for the report was December 1, 2015. Until then, KIT had already taken part in 58 Horizon 2020 projects, a number which has risen to over 80 in the meantime. A current example is the recently approved “LiRichFCC” project, coordinated by KIT, that finally made it in the FET Open funding line after an intense competition. From a total number of 800 more than projects that had applied for funding, “LiRichFCC” was selected as one of only 13 – and is the only one coordinated in Germany. The FET Open line was conceived to promote particularly risky and visionary research projects that are intended to lay the foundation for the development of radically new future technologies. “LiRichFCC” aims at developing a new material class for electrochemical energy storage (the full title of this project is “LiRichFCC – A new class of powerful materials for electrochemical energy storage: Lithium-rich oxyfluorides with cubic dense packing”).
The Monitoring Report is based on information taken from the official EU Commission grant agreements database E-CORDA that holds the data of all signed grants, and its current version includes all grants agreed until December 1, 2015. Horizon 2020 was launched in 2014 and will be in force until 2020, with a total budget of approx. EUR 75 billion. It is planned to update the Monitoring Report periodically once a year.
The results achieved so far under Horizon 2020 tie in with the success KIT achieved in the 7th EU research framework program (FP7) that was in force between 2007 and 2013. KIT benefited with approx. EUR 128 million of EU funds.
In total, third-party funds accounted for 42 percent of the overall KIT budget in 2015. So, fundraising amounted to EUR 358 million of third-party funds in 2015 (total budget in 2015: EUR 860.8 million). This included, besides the EU third-party funds, funding schemes issued by the German Federal Government, the German Research Foundation, and the industry.
Being “The Research University in the Helmholtz Association”, KIT creates and imparts knowledge for the society and the environment. It is the objective to make significant contributions to the global challenges in the fields of energy, mobility, and information. For this, about 10,000 employees cooperate in a broad range of disciplines in natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics, and the humanities and social sciences. KIT prepares its 22,800 students for responsible tasks in society, industry, and science by offering research-based study programs. Innovation efforts at KIT build a bridge between important scientific findings and their application for the benefit of society, economic prosperity, and the preservation of our natural basis of life. KIT is one of the German universities of excellence.