With the establishment of interdisciplinary digitalisation colleges at universities throughout Bavaria, students are to be made fit for the digital transformation as one of the crucial topics of our time.
As Science Minister Markus Blume announced on Thursday, the 13 new colleges at 17 universities will be funded for four years from September 2022 with a total of around 2.1 million euros per year on average. This funding is part of the new programmes to support young researchers, which are coordinated and supervised by the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt), an institute of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BAdW).
Science Minister Markus Blume: “Digital transformation is an absolutely key topic for our future prosperity. That is why we are qualifying students throughout Bavaria to penetrate central questions of digitalisation and to deal with its effects on society across disciplinary boundaries.”
With the thematic range and quality of the new digitisation colleges, our universities are once again presenting themselves as pacemakers of social innovation.
Markus Blume, Minister for Science
Colleges at all types of higher education institutions on a wide range of topics
The 13 successful applications from higher education institutions of all types (universities, universities of applied sciences or technical universities and art colleges) were recommended for funding by an independent, interdisciplinary commission of experts. Among them are seven individual applications and six joint applications from two cooperating universities each, including two universities of music and theatre.
Depending on the focus of the university or universities submitting the application, the collegia deal with topics such as “Artificial Intelligence and Sustainability”, “Digital Projects in Social Work” or psychological and ethical aspects of digitalisation.
The bidt, as the coordinating body, offers a good environment for the planned collegia with its diverse research projects and dialogue activities.
The following colleges were recommended for funding
Individual applications
HAW Augsburg, TH Deggendorf, FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, TH Ingolstadt, OTH Regensburg, TH Rosenheim, HAW Weihenstephan-Triesdorf
Joint applications
OTH Amberg-Weiden with HAW Ansbach; Univ. Bayreuth with HAW Hof; HAW München with TU München; Hochschule für Musik und Theater München with HAW München; TU München with LMU München; TH Nürnberg with Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg
Source: Press release of the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts of 30.06.2022
