Ulm University () is a public university in Ulm, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The University was founded in 1967 and focuses on natural sciences, medicine, engineering sciences, mathematics, economics and computer science. With 9,891 students (summer semester 2018), it is one of the youngest public universities in Germany. The campus of the university is located north of the city on a hill called Oberer Eselsberg, while the university hospital has additional sites across the city.
History
The university is the youngest public university in the state of Baden-Württemberg, which boasts several old, renowned universities in Heidelberg (founded in 1386), Freiburg (1457) and Tübingen (1477). The idea was to create a university with a new approach in both research and teaching. An important concept since the foundation of the university has always been to promote interdisciplinarity. In the decades following the foundation, the spectrum of subjects has steadily been extended, and the university has grown significantly.
An important step in combining the strength of industrial and academic research was the realization of the idea of a science park around the main university campus. Research centers of companies like Daimler, BMW, Siemens and in the past also Nokia, AEG, have been established at the site, in addition to institutes of the university focusing on applied research. Among other large research projects, the university features four Collaborative Research Centers (German: Sonderforschungsbereiche), which are established on a competitive basis by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG). Third-party funding of research reached 67.5 million euros in 2009.
In 1998, Ulm University introduced an International Masters program in English: M.Sc. in Communication Technology, which is the first of its kind in Germany. Since then, this program attracts students from different countries around the world. C-Tech Program has research collaboration with many renowned Universities around the world.
It also offers other English programs, namely M.Sc. and PhD in molecular medicine, M.Sc. in advanced materials, M.Sc. in energy science and technology, M.Sc. in finance, M.Sc. in biology and M.Sc. in advanced oncology, the latter being an extra-occupational program.
In 2003, the Ulm University was involved in founding a private university in Egypt, the German University in Cairo.
Since 2007, the university has been participating in the German Universities Excellence Initiative with the newly founded International Graduate School in Molecular Medicine Ulm.
Name
As Albert Einstein was born in Ulm in 1879, it was suggested repeatedly that the university be named after him. In November 2006, the senate of the university finally decided to rename the university. As this decision was however not confirmed by the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts of the State of Baden-Württemberg, the university was not renamed to Albert Einstein University of Ulm (German: Albert-Einstein-Universität Ulm) as of July 2007, and stayed as Ulm University. However, the street on which the main buildings of the Ulm University are located, and thus the physical address of the university, was named "Albert-Einstein-Allee" in honor of Einstein.
Campus and facilities
Academy for Science, Industry and Technology
In 2008, the academy again expanded its course programme, including a newly added programme entitled "Special Pain Therapy". This is an 80-hour course following the curriculum of the German Medical Association, which is taught in 14 themed blocks in four modules. Another new offer is a three-semester programme in "Commercial Mediation and Organisational Development", which consists of nine modules and follows the guidelines of the Federal Association for Mediation in Commerce and the Workplace. Within another newly integrated programme on intercultural training, the problems of intercultural communication and interaction were dealt with. The aim here is to shorten the adaptation phase in a foreign culture during a stay abroad and thereby ease integration into the new studying or working environment. In 2008, a total of 875 participants took advantage of the academy's course offerings. The most popular in terms of participant numbers was again the "Compact Seminar Emergency Medicine", followed by the course offerings from the International Center for Advanced Studies (ICAS) and the distance learning programmes in actuarial science.