Faculty of Computer Science

Founded in 1972

Institutes 8

Professorships 47

Students 3,550

Degree programs 8

Further information can be found here.

Important invention within the faculty

The digitalization of communication was promoted early on in Karlsruhe, which led to the founding of the first Institute for Telematics in 1982 and the connection of Germany to the CSNET in 1984, the foundation stone for the reception of the first German Internet e-mail.
















An outstanding current project example
Modern cyber-physical systems (CPS) such as vehicles or energy grids integrate computational and physical processes. The development of such complex systems requires specialized "views" for the developing engineers, as CPS consist of many interacting components that require expertise from different disciplines.
The DFG Collaborative Research Center 1608 "Convide", established in 2023, develops methods to ensure the consistency, reliability, flexibility and adaptability of these systems. Researchers from the Technical Universities of Dresden and Munich and the University of Mannheim are also involved, with KIT as spokesperson. In addition to the KIT Faculty of Computer Science, the KIT Faculties of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology and Mechanical Engineering are also part of the CRC.


Historical first picture concerning the faculty

At the end of the 1950s, the development of computer science began at the Institute of Applied Mathematics, where electronic calculators were developed, and at the Institute of Communications Processing and Communications Transmission with programming training on the ER 56 computer. In 1966, an institutionalized computer center was established, followed by the introduction of the computer science degree course in 1969, before the first Faculty of Computer Science in Germany was founded in 1972.


First documented research project
The first major research project began in 1976 and became the nucleus of the later SFB 314 Artificial Intelligence - Knowledge-Based Systems (1984). To this day, AI and robotics are important research topics at the faculty, which is reflected in the ARMAR robot family (2000-dato), among other things.