About us
The Department of Mechanical Engineering is part of KIT's Area 3 "Mechanical and Electrical Engineering" together with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, four Helmholtz programs, and eight institutes of the large-scale research area. The department consists of more than 20 institutes with about 1,000 employees, including about 45 professors, 460 scientific employees, and 200 employees in administration and technology. In addition, there are several hundred tutors and scientific assistants.
Four funded projects strengthen research infrastructures in production technology, climate research. Battery recycling and quantum communication. KIT has been extraordinarily successful in the current competition for EFRE funding organized by the state of Baden-Württemberg. For three projects as an applicant and another as a partner, KIT has raised a total of 5,855,000 euros. The funds will be used for the targeted expansion of modern research infrastructures in strategic future fields.
At the end of the winter semester on February 20, 2026, the Department of Mechanical Engineering held its traditional department colloquium. In a festive setting, letters of congratulations were presented to the master's graduates, prizes were awarded, and honors were bestowed. This year's keynote speech, entitled "Shaping Movement – Robotic Intelligence in a Dynamic World," was given by Professor Arne Rönnau from the Institute for Information Management in Engineering (IMI). We would like to congratulate all graduates and award winners.
Prof. Jürgen Fleischer, Head of the Institute for Production Technology (wbk) at KIT, is the new President of the WGP (Scientific Society for Production Technology). His goal for his two-year term is to work with his colleagues at the WGP to strengthen the competitiveness of the German manufacturing industry. Prof. Fleischer, who replaced Prof. Michael Zäh from iwb Munich on January 1, 2026, worked in industry for eleven years before joining the University of Karlsruhe.
Breakthrough for green power generation with hydrogen: Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have set a runtime record with a new compressorless gas turbine. The burner with revolutionary pressure gain combustion technology ran for 303 seconds. This surpasses the previous NASA record of 250 seconds and sets new standards for the use of hydrogen in energy supply, which, unlike natural gas, can be produced with renewable energies.
The European Research Council (ERC) is funding KIT twice with a "proof of concept" for medical diagnostics and materials development. The funding supports projects that aim to translate basic research into concrete applications. Chemist Dr. Frank Biedermann from the Institute of Organic Chemistry was successful with his "SupraPlate" application. The second grant supports Professor Christian Greiner from the Institute of Applied Materials. With his SOAR project, he aims to develop a new class of copper-based alloys that are resistant to friction and wear.
Training young research talents in the field of AI and transferring research results to industry more quickly – that is the goal of a joint center for applied artificial intelligence established by KIT, the University of Stuttgart, and the University of Tübingen. In the presence of the state government of Baden-Württemberg, they signed the founding agreement for the graduate center "connAIx – Research School for Applied AI" today. The facility will be located in Heilbronn and will promote the practical application of AI in areas such as robotics, chip design, and cybersecurity.
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