Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; ) is both a German public research university in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, and a research center of the Helmholtz Association.

KIT was created in 2009 when the University of Karlsruhe (), founded in 1825 as a public research university and also known as the "Fridericiana", merged with the Karlsruhe Research Center (), which had originally been established in 1956 as a national nuclear research center (, or KfK). By combining academic education with large-scale non-university research, KIT integrates research, teaching, and innovation in a single institutional structure that is unique within the German research landscape.

KIT is a member of the TU9, an alliance of nine leading technical universities in Germany. As part of the German Universities Excellence Initiative KIT was one of three universities which were awarded excellence status in 2006. In the following "German Excellence Strategy" KIT was awarded as one of eleven "Excellence Universities" in 2019.

Science-based mechanical engineering was founded at KIT in the mid-19th century under the direction of Ferdinand Redtenbacher, which influenced the foundation of other technical universities, such as ETH Zurich in 1855. It established the first German faculty for computer science in 1972. On 2 August 1984, the university received the first-ever German e-mail.

Professors and former students have won six Nobel Prizes and ten Leibniz Prizes, the most prestigious as well as the best-funded prize in Europe. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology is well known for many inventors and entrepreneurs who studied or taught there, including Heinrich Hertz, Karl Friedrich Benz and the founders of SAP SE. Provided by Wikipedia