TU9 was established in 2003 as an informal consortium of those Institutes of Technology in Germany which were established before 1900. The founding president of TU9 is Horst Hippler, also president of the University of Karlsruhe. The registered associationTU9 German Institutes of Technology e. V. was solemnly founded on January 26, 2006 at TU Braunschweig. Its head office is in Berlin. The following presidents attended foundation and signed the certificate of incorporation:
The mission of this organization is to act as contact for society, economy and politics, particularly for the university education of engineers. The members of TU9 mutually accredit their bachelor's and master's degrees and, therefore, support the progression of the Bologna process and quality assurance concerning university education of engineers.
Associated especially through their core subjects, the engineering sciences, the members of TU9 pay attention particularly to the public perception of topics with high relevance to these sciences. This includes analysis of statistics about third-party funds and the description of the importance of the TU9 universities concerning graduates.
Position in Germany
According to the research report 2018 of the German Research Foundation, TU9 universities are among the universities with the highest third-party funding in Germany. They received more than one-fifth of all DFG grants across all scientific disciplines. The TU Dresden received the highest number of DFG grants in electrical engineering, the TU Darmstadt in computer science and the RWTH Aachen in mechanical engineering. In a competitive selection process, the DFG selects the best research projects from researchers at universities and research institutes and finances them. The ranking is thus regarded as an indicator of the quality of research. In the profile area of engineering, almost 50% of the DFG funding volume goes to TU9 universities. Almost a quarter of all recipients of a European Research Councilgrant, the highest endowed science prize of the European Union, preferred one of the TU9 universities. RWTH Aachen and TU Darmstadt are among the universities with the highest number of top managers in the Germany economy. They belong to the top 3 universities.
