With six successful clusters in the current round of the Excellence Strategy, the University of Tübingen has achieved great success and retains the chance of being awarded the title of ‘University of Excellence’ again, from 2027 onwards. It will receive a total of six Clusters of Excellence, which will be funded by the federal and state governments for seven years from January 1, 2026, as part of the Excellence Strategy. These include three clusters that are already established and will receive renewed funding. In accordance with the guidelines of the Excellence Strategy, the University of Tübingen can now undergo evaluation in the ‘Universities of Excellence’ funding line.

One of those three successful clusters that will continue to receive funding is the Cluster of Excellence ‘Machine Learning: New Perspectives for Science’, of which the IWM is one of the non-university partners.

The declared aim of the cluster is to develop the full potential of machine learning for science and to understand the changes this will bring to scientific approaches.

The Rector of the University of Tübingen, Professor Dr Dr h.c. (Dōshisha) Karla Pollmann, upon hearing the news from Bonn, explained that the decision was also an honour for all non-university partners, without whom this success would not have been possible. ‘(...) in the case of the Machine Learning Cluster, this includes the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, the ELLIS Institute Tübingen, the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien (IWM) and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) Kigali, Rwanda, all of whom also contributed to the success,’ said the University of Tübingen's press release.

Congratulations from the IWM

IWM Director Prof Dr Ulrike Cress says: ‘We warmly congratulate the University of Tübingen and all the scientists involved on this great, well-deserved success for their work.’

She is particularly pleased about the success of the cooperation partner in the Excellence Strategy and emphasises: ‘The cooperation between the IWM and the University of Tübingen in the field of machine learning enables further synergies between university and non-university research. We look forward to further joint research work.’

Further information on the Cluster of Excellence:
Machine Learning: New perspectives for science

To the joint press release of the DFG and the WR:
Decisions in the Second Round of Competition under the Excellence Strategy: Excellence Commission Selects 70 Clusters of Excellence