50 years Faculty of Mechanical Engineering

The Faculty of Mechanical Engineering can look back on a strong development: The "Department of Production Engineering", founded in 1971 and renamed Mechanical Engineering in 1975, has meanwhile become one of the faculties with the highest third party funding at TU Dortmund University. In the meantime, 17 professors and two junior professors are conducting research and teaching at their chairs, departments and institutes. Today, the faculty focuses its research on production technology and logistics as well as their digitalization.

The Faculty of Mechanical Engineering is regionally and internationally networked: At the science location Dortmund, especially the Fraunhofer Institutes for Material Flow and Logistics (IML) and for Software and Systems Engineering (ISST) are closely connected to the university. Since 2013, TU Dortmund University and Fraunhofer IML have been working together in the LogisticsCampus, which has developed international appeal thanks to its links with industry and the combination of education and research.

The five fields of study offered by the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering are in high demand among young people: In the winter semester of 2021/22, around 4,000 students were enrolled here. In the WirtschaftsWoche ranking, Dortmund's mechanical engineering program repeatedly made it into the top 10. The diploma program in logistics was the first of its kind in Germany in 1998, and for years the faculty was also the only institution in Germany to offer both bachelor's and master's programs in logistics. For the international master's program in Manufacturing Technology, students from all over the world have been coming to TU Dortmund every year since 2011.

Many of the faculty's developments and research projects have attracted attention throughout Germany in recent decades. The H-Bahn, which has been in operation since 1984, was the first automatic mass transit system in the Federal Republic of Germany and served as a model for the Skytrain at Düsseldorf Airport. The technology for it was co-developed by Prof. Reinhardt Jünemann of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. In 2020, Dr. Dennis Freiburg, who developed the world's lightest e-bike while working on his doctorate, made it into the Guinness Book of Records.

What else makes the faculty special and more detailed information on the individual professorships can be found in our interactive commemorative publication on the 50th anniversary of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.

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