Freie Universität Berlin is a leading research institution. It is one of the German universities successful in all three funding lines in the federal and state Excellence Initiative, thereby receiving additional funding for its institutional future development strategy.

Freie Universität can thus take its place as an international network university in the global competition among universities. Development and assessment of research projects takes place within various focus areas, research networks, and platforms for interdisciplinary collaborative research.

The university’s performance in the Excellence Initiative provided funding for several new graduate schools and transdisciplinary research clusters. In particular, the graduate schools play a key role in the development of internationally competitive research centers of excellence.