The Dieter Schwarz Foundation (DSS) is funding ten additional professorships and a "Data Science Center" at the TUM Heilbronn Campus. The professorships are distributed among the School of Computation, Information and Technology and the School of Management.
Since 2018, DSS has thus endowed TUM with a total of 41 professorships, 32 of which are in Heilbronn. This gives the TUM Heilbronn campus a unique, interdisciplinary profile at the intersection of management and computer science. The professorships will be fully financed by the foundation for an initial period of 30 years, including equipment and infrastructure. The contract is based on the TUM Fundraising Code of Conduct, which excludes any influence by donors on research and teaching.
Under the motto "For the Digital Age", the expansion of the TUM Campus Heilbronn will focus on significantly strengthening the areas of data science and artificial intelligence (AI), with connectivity to the AI Innovation Park Heilbronn. To this end, the focus areas of Digital Transformation, Family Business and Information Engineering will be expanded to include a new "TUM Heilbronn Data Science Center". Likewise, new tandem project formats will be established to strengthen scientific interlinking and synergy with the other TUM locations.
Another goal of the expansion is the further development of the internationalization of the TUM Heilbronn Campus. The new "Dieter Schwarz Fellowship" is intended to attract excellent international professors to Heilbronn and to build a bridge to the Garching Campus as fellows of the world-renowned TUM Institute for Advanced Study (TUM-IAS). The "Dieter Schwarz Courageous Research Grant" will be established to promote courageous project ideas. In global competition, top international talents will thus be given the opportunity to carry out potential-rich "High Risk - High Gain" research projects on the thematic complex of digitalization and sustainability in collaboration with TUM.
Further information is available in the TUM press release