Collaborations

The Department of Mechanical Engineering cooperates with external partners in many ways. In the context of scientific associations, such as CIRP, WGP, WLT, MHI, WiGeP, Design Society or GAMM, works closely with external partners. Also, the department cooperates significantly with national and international research projects and networks, often coordinated over a number of years and promoted through associations such as the DFG and the Bavarian Research Foundation FSO or the EU.

In thematically limited projects, bi- or trilateral cooperation is carried out with partners from science and industry, such as with the Ingolstadt institutes of the FAU “INI.FAU”. In addition, individual projects and collaborative research are carried out very successfully in interdisciplinary cooperation within the university. Within the framework of joint research projects and through the Erasmus / Socrates student exchange program, there are partnerships with over 60 foreign universities, which contribute to the lively international exchange of research, scientists and students. The department’s long-standing cooperation with more than one hundred industrial companies represents the practical relevance of research and the transfer of university research into the industry.

In 2015, the Department of Mechanical Engineering generated about 30% of the external funding of the Faculty of Technology and more than 10% of the third-party funding of the entire university (without hospitals), a total of more than €18 million. Mechanical engineering placed in the top group in the DFG 2012 Förderatlas and the 2008 CHE Research Ranking. These figures do not take into account the third-party revenues of the university institutions closely linked to the department Central Institute for New Materials and Process Technology and the Bavarian Technology Center for Electric Drive Technology (E | Drive-Center) or non-university institutions such as Bayerisches Laserzentrum GmbH and Neue Materialien Fürth GmbH Focus on Technology Transfer. Particularly noteworthy here are the DFG Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 814 “Additive Manufacturing”, the SFB / Transregio 39 “PT-PIESA”, the SFB / Transregio 73 “Sheet Metal Forming” and the “Advanced Investigators Grant” MOCOPOLY of the European Research Council (ERC).

The department’s extraordinary performance and international visibility of the department continue to be demonstrated by its involvement in excellence programs such as the “Cluster of Excellence Engineering of Advanced Materials” and the “Graduate School of Advanced Optical Technologies”, whose spokesperson is Prof. Dr.-Ing. Michael Schmidt from the Department of Photonic Technologies.