TU Wien, TU Graz and Montanuniversität Leoben are now joining forces to achieve more: As part of the "TU Austria" initiative, Austria's technical universities will be joining forces in future to address common concerns in research, teaching and higher education policy issues. This will create a network in the fields of technology, natural sciences and engineering with almost 8,000 employees and around 38,000 students.
Vienna/Graz/Leoben (TU Austria). - Excellence unites: Under the motto "United Through Excellence", Vienna University of Technology, Graz University of Technology and Montanuniversität Leoben will be pulling together in future. Particularly when it comes to coordination in research and teaching, when it comes to expensive infrastructure or the utilisation of synergies in the service sector, they want to coordinate their efforts and speak with one voice both nationally and internationally.
TU Austria President and Montanuni Rector Wolfhard Wegscheider: "It is important to draw attention to the special needs of technical universities. Technology and science are important to the economy, but they are also expensive. The cooperation between our three universities gives our voice more weight."
TU Austria is organised as an association with a coordination office in Leoben and is intended as an umbrella brand for Austria's technical universities - similar to the German "TU9", the association of the nine leading technical universities in Germany, or 3TU, the cooperation platform of the leading Dutch technical universities.
Common strengths
"We want to coordinate our research and teaching before others do it for us. In times of tight budgets, closer cooperation is the only way to keep up internationally. It makes no sense to offer everything everywhere," says TU Wien Rector Peter Skalicky.
TU Austria's specialist focus is primarily on areas with overlapping content: Energy, materials science, geosciences/geodesy, production engineering, tunnelling, techno-economics, information and communication technology. These topics are to be harmonised for selected activities in the future.
"Our common goal is to strengthen the technical sciences and engineering in Austria. We have many common concerns in these areas and, as we can usually achieve more by working together than on our own, we want to coordinate the further development of our three institutions in these areas in terms of research, teaching and infrastructure in the future," explains Hans Sünkel, Rector of TU Graz. In any case, the members of TU Austria want to present themselves internationally together from May: at EXPO 2010 in Shanghai.
