TU Wien

Overview

TU Wien, or the Technological University of Vienna, is a prestigious technical university and one of the major universities in Vienna, Austria. It was established by the decree of Emperor Francis I of Austria as the k.k. Polytechnische Institut or the Imperial-Royal Polytechnic Institute in 1815. According to the Constitution of the Imperial & Royal Polytechnic Institute in Vienna, the institution had three areas of responsibility: to be a technical institution that promotes science, to be a conservatory for science and the arts or a technical showcase, and to promote the national industry. Because of these decrees, the Polytechnic Institute had a commercial focus and educated students in military engineering, mining, and construction to meet the need of the time for specialists in those areas.

TU Wien gained full legal independence due to the Universities Act of 2002. This allowed the university to reorganize its structure and increase its number of faculties. Following the reorganization, there are now eight faculties: Architecture and Planning, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Computer Sciences, Mathematics and Geoinformation, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Chemistry, and Physics. These offer the 19 undergraduate programs, 31 masters programs, and three postgraduate programs as well as several Continuing Education programs of the university. Among these, the Technological University of Vienna is well-regarded for its courses in Computer Science, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering.

Aside from its robust academic courses, TU Wien is also engaged in rigorous research in the five key areas of Computational Science and Engineering, Quantum Physics and Quantum Technologies, Materials Matter, Information and Communication Technology, and Energy and Environment. Additional fields of interest for research in the technological university are Architectural Arts, Urban and Regional Transformation, Fundamental Mathematics, and Mathematical Methods in Economics.

Research in those fields at TU Wien is undertaken at its 57 institutes by its almost 3,000 researchers. Researchers can engage in their scientific inquiries with the help of eight research facilities as well. A few of these are the Center for Micro- and Nanostructures, TRIGA Mark II-Nuclear Reactor, Analytical Instrumentation Center, and the University Service Facility for Transmission Electron Microscopy.

Several researchers at the Technological University of Vienna have received accolades, such as the Wittgenstein Award and the START Award. The institution has also attracted funding from the European Research Council for works in physics and chemistry, among others. Moreover, TU Wien has funding from the Austrian Science Fund and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency, allowing it to be a center of innovation in basic and applied research.