Preface of the Scientific Director

Dear prospective Master Students,

Within in the last 100 years industrialization has been ensured by the introduction of outstanding inventions like the steam or the combustion engine. They have originally been invented in order to release men of heavy labor. Since then man has made these technologies available for everybody everywhere. Hereupon the human primary energy demand has grown exponentially to approximately 12 billion tons of mineral coal units per year today and is predicted to double in the next 30 to 40 years. The world’s energy is delivered to 88% out of coal, oil and gas, 12% are provided by nuclear and hydro power. Only a negligible part is produced by renewable sources, such as solar power, geo thermal energy, wind power or biomass. Calculated from today’s energy consumption the earth amount of coal can still last for 150 years, gas and oil for 70 and 40 years and natural uranium for 55 years. This consideration reveals, that in order to meet human energy demands engineers are facing a huge challenge converting energy with high efficiency, minimum pollution and less exploitation of earth resources possible, today and in future.

Furthermore industry is expanding their frontiers all over the world and thus demanding flexibility and mobility of their employed engineers – foreign languages already belong to the standard equipment of today’s young professionals. International education forming intercultural thinking is required, which is the reason why the Master of Science Program in Mechanical Engineering has been set up. Every year hundreds of highly qualified international students from all over the world are invited to join two years of modern education and interesting studies at the University of Technology Aachen, which is well reputed for its science and engineering fields of research and strongly related to industrial application.

The city of Aachen as the most western city of Germany, situated in the “Euregio”, only a few kilometers away from the Dutch and Belgian boarder is an enjoyable place to live, as it provides its 40000 students with many cultural programs and social activities.

I hope that these pages awake your interest to join the Master Courses in Aachen and that you take advantage of the information offered.

Univ. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Stefan Pischinger, Scientific Director