President’s podcast: a look back at the excellence application
11/03/2026How can JMU build on the experience gained from its application for the excellence title? That is the topic of the latest episode of the President’s podcast with Paul Pauli.
It was by no means an easy day for the the University of Würzburg (JMU): on 2 October 2026, the German Science Council decided that the university would not be awarded a grant in the federal and state Excellence Competition and would therefore not receive funding as a University of Excellence.
Why did it not quite make the cut in the end? What lessons has the university learnt from the application process? And what does the decision mean for its future development? In the latest episode of his podcast, University President Paul Pauli takes stock.
Click here to watch the video recording!
Würzburg’s application for the excellence title
The decision to award the title of ‘University of Excellence’ was preceded in April 2026 by a site visit lasting several days by an international panel of experts to Würzburg. Prior to that, in May 2025, JMU had secured its formal entry into the Excellence Competition: Individual universities were only eligible to apply if they had successfully secured funding under a preceding funding scheme for two so-called clusters of excellence – large research consortia in which scientists from different disciplines work on forward-looking topics. Würzburg succeeded in doing so with two projects: ctd.qmat, a cluster dedicated to research into quantum materials, and NUCLEATE, a cluster focused on nucleic acid research.
