top position DFG Funding Atlas: Ruperto Carola among the “Top Trio” with Highest Grants

Heidelberg University is represented in the current Funding Atlas of the German Research Foundation (DFG) among the “Top 3” of universities with the highest DFG grants and, specifically, takes top position among the natural sciences. According to the report published in early October 2021, Ruperto Carola has been awarded a total of 332 million euros for 2017 to 2019 and ranks third in Germany, behind Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich (369 million euros) and Technical University (TU) Munich (346.5 million euros). Comparing the academic fields, Heidelberg University comes top in the natural science disciplines (73.2 million euros), followed by TU Munich (68.7 million euros) and then Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Mainz University (66.6 million euros each).

In the ranking of universities with the highest DFG grants, Heidelberg University was also among the “Top 3” in 2006, 2009, 2015 and 2018. The natural sciences move forward from sixth to first place in a comparison of the 2018 Funding Atlas with the present. The life sciences (150.2 million euros) continue to rank second, behind LMU Munich (176.9 million euros) and ahead of the University of Freiburg (147 million euros). The humanities and social sciences are also among the “Top 10” with DFG grants totalling 37.9 million euros. As to the evaluation of the regional research profiles, the metropolises Berlin (838.7 million euros) and Munich (816.3 million euros) as well as Heidelberg / Mannheim (431.9 million euros) prove to be particularly strong DFG regions in the 2021 Funding Atlas. An overview of federal states shows that, from 2017 to 2019, just under 1.6 billion euros in DFG funding went to universities and non-university research institutions in Baden-Württemberg. The Funding Atlas covers the DFG funding instruments of individual funding, coordinated programmes, the Excellence Initiative and Excellence Strategy of the federal and state governments, as well as infra-structure funding.

The DFG Funding Atlas is the now ninth volume of reports with which the largest German research financing organisation has presented “key figures relating to publicly financed research in Germany” every three years since 1997. The statistical and data base – the volume published now covers the period from 2017 to 2019 – was expanded in the past by specific issues, which, in the current edition, include historical research funding from 1921 to 1945.