Outstanding: Electrical, Electronic and Communication Engineering at the FAU

The German Federal Scientific Advisory Board certifies our high level of research quality

The Electrical, Electronic and Communication Engineering Department (EEI) at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) came out top of the class in a nationwide research rating in the field of electrical, electronic and communication engineering. The German Federal Scientific Advisory Board has issued the FAU with an impressive evaluation whereby the departments of Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Microsystems, Information and Communication Technology and Systems Technology were all awarded very good to good in research quality. Research activity and visibility of the research institution was awarded very good; research performance in relation to personnel was very good to good; promotion of young researchers was very good and transfer of knowledge on implementation and further use of research results was very good to good.

The research rating is based on evaluations by independent reviewers. The reviewers base their judgement primarily on all research activities, publications and university patents. The comparison is discipline-specific and broken down into various performance criteria. The rating should help universities identify their strengths and weaknesses in comparison with their competitors. It should also raise the international profile of German science and contrary to international rankings also include extramural research institutes.

Thirty-one universities and sixteen extramural research institutes were reviewed and compared in the field of electrical, electronic and communication engineering. The data was collected in January and February 2010, during which time the departmental coordinators involved collected the necessary information on-site regarding infrastructure, courses of study and main fields of research, as well as publication analyses, personnel and graduate data, doctoral study programmes, third-party funds, patent applications and company start-ups.

The course coordinator for the EEI department at the FAU was Prof. Dr.-Ing. André Kaup. He coordinated the extensive data collection along with the head of the EEI department, Dr.-Ing. Jochen Weinzierl. Following a recommendation by the German Federal Science Advisory Board, research rating is also currently being tried out in the field of Arts and Humanities (English/American Studies), the results for which will be published at the end of 2012.

Further information for the media:

uni | media service | news No. 169/2011 from 16.06.2011