University of Tübingen, on its way to renew its status as one of Germany’s Universities of Excellence
Copyright: Universität Tübingen / Valentin Marquardt
Following a highly successful first selection round last year, the University of Tübingen was invited to submit full proposals for a total of six new Clusters of Excellence in the respective funding line, as well as applications for extensions to the three existing clusters. Therefore, Tübingen was represented with nine research projects at the application stage.
The decision to fund GreenRobust, Human Origins and TERRA as new Clusters of Excellence in Tübingen in the future attests the University of Tübingen’s leading position in these fields of research. At the same time, renewed funding for the existing clusters, Controlling Microbes to Fight Infections, Image-guided and Functionally Instructed Tumor Therapies and Machine Learning: New Perspectives for Science, shows that outstanding research has been conducted at our University in recent years", reacts Professor Dr. Karla Pollmann, the President of the University of Tübingen.
Excellence Clusters to receive the sponsorship from 2026
Controlling Microbes to Fight Infections (CMFI): New Strategies investigates mechanisms of microbiome dynamics and uses them to develop strategies for the prevention and treatment of bacterial infections. The aim is to prevent and tackle difficult-to-treat infections with antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens using new methods and active agents.
GreenRobust: understanding robustness in plants from molecules to ecosystems combines the expertise of the Universities of Tübingen, Heidelberg, and Hohenheim to understand how plants achieve robustness in light of an ever-changing environment. The cluster focuses on the investigation of robustness against climatic and biotic disturbances across various levels of biological organization, from molecules to populations, in a selected group of species from environmentally and agriculturally important plant families.
Human Origins: A paradigm shift in the study of human evolution looks at the past five million years of human evolution and explores fundamental questions, including: where did we come from and how did we become what we are now? how did it come about that we, Homo sapiens, are the only hominin species still around today?
Image-Guided and Functionally Instructed Tumor Therapies (iFIT) will expand academic drug development in order to be able to develop highly innovative cancer therapeutics and diagnostics for initial application in humans.
Machine Learning: New Perspectives for Science used machine learning techniques to gain new insights into very different fields of science - from the fundamental building blocks of the brain to gravitational waves in physics. The cluster will seek to further develop methods and integrate automated learning processes into overall academic work processes.
TERRA: Interactions between geosphere and biosphere in a changing world will investigate how geo-biosphere interactions both respond to and influence environmental change. TERRA tests the hypothesis of whether the geosphere’s diversity stabilizes the biosphere and, vice versa, whether the biosphere’s diversity stabilizes the geosphere – and asks: if this is the case, how?
A good chance for Tübingen to maintain its University of Excellence title
Universities that have got at least two Clusters of Excellence may apply for the University of Excellence status and extra funding within the Excellence Strategy funding line provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG), under the German government’s Excellence Strategy. Thus, Tübingen's management and all university members are now focusing on this next stage of the Excellence Strategy:
Research is at the heart of the Excellence Strategy, yet at the same time, the university also plans to further develop teaching and learning as well as knowledge transfer at the highest level in the future,” said President Pollmann.
A DFG committee will decide in March 2026 whether the University of Tübingen will be able to maintain its status as a University of Excellence from 2027 onwards.
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