University of Düsseldorf

Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Established	1965
President	Anja Steinbeck[]
Academic staff	2,027 (Dec 2011)
Administrative staff	873 (Dec 2011)
Students	20,515 (winter semester 2011/2012)
Location	Düsseldorf, Germany
Website	www.uni-duesseldorf.de

Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) (German: Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf) was founded in 1965 as the successor organisation to Düsseldorf’s Medical Academy of 1907. Following several expansions throughout the decades, the university has comprised five faculties since 1993. At present, more than 20,000 full-time students are pursuing studies at HHU. There is a total staff of approximately 2,900 persons at HHU (academic and non-academic).

The "early history" of Düsseldorf University began with the Düsseldorf Academy for Practical Medicine in 1907. The city’s first real university, however, was only founded in 1965 by adding a combined Faculty of Natural Sciences–Arts and Humanities to the existing medical one. Only four years later the university split the combined faculty into two separate bodies, which led to the constitution of a Faculty of Arts and Humanities as well as a Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. In 1979 a modern University and State Library was opened to the public, and a sports centre was added in 1980/81. Following a quarrel of more than 23 years, the "nameless" university of Düsseldorf was finally christened after the poet Heinrich Heine, one of Düsseldorf’s most famous sons, in 1989. From this period on, the campus university has been opening up towards the city and its citizens. Heinrich Heine University’s Faculty of Business Administration and Economics opened in 1990, the Faculty of Law in 1993.

With more than 3,000 students in the winter semester 2011/12, the Medical Faculty is HHU’s third largest unit. Study offers range from Medicine and Dentistry (state examination) through Toxicology (M.Sc.) to Public Health and Endocrinology (both M.Sc., further education). Graduate studies have been institutionalised in the form of the faculty-wide Medical Research School Düsseldorf, which offers networking, services and counselling for both graduate students and their supervisors. Further structured doctorate support is provided by research training groups in neurosciences (RTG 1033, iBrain), in hepatology (research training in CRC 974) and in tumor research (Düsseldorf School of Oncology DSO). Research hubs with a significant volume of third-party founded collaborative projects are hepatology (CRC 974 and Research Unit 217), cardiovascular research, neurosciences, surgery (Research Unit 1585), infectiology and immunology (Research Unit 729), and diabetes and metabolism research. The Biomedical Research Centre (BMFZ), the Leibniz-Institute for Environmental Medicine (IUF), the C. and O. Vogt Institute for Brain Research and the German Diabetes Centre (DDZ) are important organisations that form the local research environment.