On 23 June 2005, the German federal and state governments agreed on an initiative to promote top-level research in Germany. The Excellence Initiative aims at strengthening science and research in Germany in the long term, improving its international competitiveness and raising the profile of the top performers in academia and research. For the first time in the German academic system with its equally funded state-owned universities, an official identification of the top-level universities took place, based on performance and future planning. As a result of extensive evaluation by international committees, the German Science Foundation (DFG) and Science Council (WR) granted several large research clusters and funding for a new Graduate School to TUM, which was recognized as one of the three first institutions to be awarded the “elite-status” among German universities.

The IAS at Technische Universität München was formally established already in 2005 as part of a competitive internal restructuring process called innovaTUM-2008. The Excellence Initiative by the German State and Federal Governments gave us the opportunity to develop the idea of the IAS and consider how an interdisciplinary Institute for Advanced Study would be designed under ideal conditions, reflecting the strengths of TUM, including engineering sciences, industry research and reaching out to the humanities.

Visits at benchmark institutions such as the Princeton IAS and the Peter Wall Institute at UBC Vancouver and the organization of a management office began in fall 2006 with Günter Schmidt-Gess as managing director. Further staff members were recruited soon. In January 2007, the strategy and planning was presented to the governing Board of Trustees at their first meeting in Munich. This board comprises mainly external members, among them IAS-directors, representatives of international exchange programs and Nobel laureates. Following recommendations of the Board, we focused on the search for the first academic director, the planning of the institute’s building and the selection of a small, excellent group of fellows. In October 2007, the first eight fellows of TUM-IAS started their projects.