About the WSI
The Walter Schottky Institut (WSI) is a central institute of the Technische Universität München (TUM) which was founded in 1986 in order to strengthen the interaction between basic physics and semiconductor electronics research. It became operational in May 1988. The institute building contains laboratories and offices with a total area of about 2400 m2.
Today the WSI accommodates 8 research groups. The individual research groups offer attractive research opportunities for diploma (graduate) students, PhD students and postdoctoral fellows. The institute is well funded by several German research agencies and industries and equipped with state of the art fabrication and characterization tools for semiconductors that put it at the forefront of international semiconductor research. No less than eight molecular beam epitaxy machines have led to several world records in the fabrication of laser and nanoelectronic structures and devices.
A total staff of about 150 people includes scientific and technical staff, secretaries and doctorate as well as diploma (master) students. Out of these, about 25 permanent positions are authorized by the TUM and belong to the Department of Physics and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, respectively, while basically all the doctorate candidates and postdoctoral positions are financed via external research projects from different funding agencies.
The WSI is participating in several joint projects in collaboration with industrial research laboratories, Fraunhofer Institutes, Max Planck Institutes and many other universities. The major research activities are funded by the
- Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF)
- Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie (BMWi)
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
- Siemens AG
- Infineon Corporation
- Bayerische Forschungsstiftung
- Volkswagenstiftung
- and the European Union.
The amount of annual external funding is about 60 per cent of the total budget of the institute, including all salaries, consumables and capital equipment.
Biography of Walter Schottky