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 and
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 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 ==