Excellence Strategy: TUM School of Medicine and Health opened

1/26/2024
Reading time 4 min.

As part of its TUM AGENDA 2030, funded by the Excellence Strategy of the Federal Government and the Länder, the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has opened the TUM School of Medicine and Health at a ceremony. It combines the former Faculties of Medicine and Sport and Health Sciences. It aims to leverage brand-building synergy potential for the future of prevention, diagnosis, therapy, and rehabilitation.

Opening ceremony of the new TUM School of Medicine and Health in the lecture hall at the TUM University Hospital rechts der Isar

Over 120 professorships, almost 1,500 employees, and 4,500 students will make the new School an international center of excellence, with which TUM will combine its research strengths in cancer, cardiovascular and neurological diseases, allergies, and immune diseases with personalized preventive approaches and new digital technologies. This should also give new impetus to translation and translate the scientific and medical knowledge gained for people more effectively into health-related well-being.

Supported by a new governance structure with the three Departments of Health and Sport Sciences, Preclinical Medicine, and Clinical Medicine, as well as interdisciplinary centers that bundle specialist expertise in crucial areas into critical masses, an innovative environment for networked research, cross-cultural teaching and future-oriented healthcare is being created.

TUM President Prof. Thomas F. Hofmann said at the celebrations at the University Hospital rechts der Isar: "With the new TUM School of Medicine and Health, we are putting an exclamation mark behind the stronger interlinking of health promotion, prevention, and health care with basic biomedical research as well as translational and clinical research. With this repositioning, we want to develop into a thought leader for medicine and health of the future!"

Together with the Klinikum rechts der Isar, the TUM School of Medicine and Health wants to rethink cutting-edge medicine across institutional boundaries as part of the M1 - Munich Medicine Alliance with the medical facilities of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and Helmholtz Munich and lead Munich's medical and health research to world-class status.

High hopes for the future

Bavaria's Minister of Science Markus Blume said: "The founding of the TUM School of Medicine and Health is our top medical kick-off of the year. Because we have big plans for 2024: Our Highmed Agenda Bavaria is really picking up speed. Whether it's the new TUM Hospital or the founding of our Munich Medicine Alliance M1 - Munich is a central pillar for the cutting-edge medicine of the future. And the new TUM School will play a key role in this. The strategy behind it: Larger units for greater effectiveness. With a new study platform and the shared use of research data, the School will bring the added value of networking that is so important in medicine - thus improving diagnosis, treatment, and aftercare."

The founding Dean of the School, Prof. Stephanie E. Combs, emphasized: "The strategic alliance between the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences closes the circle between personalized prevention and highly specialized intervention. Therefore, we are ideally positioned to address the relevant research and patient care issues. Embedded in the highly dynamic environment of an internationally highly competitive and successful TUM, we benefit from the development and translation of innovative treatment concepts from the scientific impulses of the university's other six schools. Together with the TUM University Hospital, this merger has the potential to decisively shape the future of medicine and health sciences and to offer our students an even more comprehensive and forward-looking education. The last few months have already shown that teamwork and interdisciplinarity open new horizons and are the key to joint success."

The Medical Director of the MRI, Dr. Martin Siess, emphasized the close and proven cooperation: "By founding the TUM School of Medicine and Health, the hospital and the Technical University of Munich can rethink the future of medicine. In conjunction with the future technologies and the excellent network of disciplines at TUM, the new TUM School of Medicine, Sports and Health opens up new opportunities for innovative research and teaching approaches - and, derived from this, for new clinical care pathways."

The transformation of TUM

After the founding of the TUM School of Life Sciences in 2020, the TUM School of Management, the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology, and the TUM School of Engineering and Design followed in 2021. In 2022, the TUM School of Natural Sciences and the TUM School of Computation, Information, and Technology were launched. The structural reform has now been completed by the TUM School of Medicine and Health. The TUM Schools are linked by Integrative Research Institutes as innovation spaces with a transdisciplinary cross-sectional effect.

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