Friedrich Alexander University, Germany

luding more than 4,000 from overseas, it comprises five faculties – Humanities, Social Sciences and Theology, Business, Economics and Law, Medicine, Sciences, and Engineering – as well as 23 departments, 30 clinical departments, and 19 autonomous departments. Around 250-degree programs are available at FAU, including 78 undergraduate programs, 88 masters, and 90 staatsexamen (state examinations). The university is renowned for its interdisciplinary approach. The university’s main research areas are new materials, optics, and optical technology, molecular life sciences and medicine, health technology, electronics, information and communication, energy, environment, and climate, language, culture and region, law, and economics. It has two main sites, one located in the city of Erlangen and the other in Nuremberg. In receipt of €210 million in third-party funding, FAU is one of the best funding universities in Germany. It boasts approximately 500 links with other universities and higher education institutes around the world and was the first German university to establish a branch campus in Busan, South Korea. FAU has benefited from the German government’s Excellence Initiative – resulting in the Graduate School in Advanced Optical Technologies and the Cluster of Excellence ‘Engineering of Advanced Materials’ being located at the university. Among the university’s alumni is the physicist Hans Geiger, co-inventor of the Geiger counter, as well as four Nobel Laureates.