KI:Expertisezentrum.nrw brings together AI expertise from 36 universities in North Rhine-Westphalia. The RUB leads the consortium.

AI in Higher Education
KI:Expertisezentrum.nrw begins operating

Ruhr University takes the lead in the consortium. KI:Expertisezentrum.nrw brings together the expertise of KI:edu.nrw, KI:connect.nrw, and Open Source-KI.nrw and is funded with 15.4 million euros.

The use of artificial intelligence in research, academic studies, teaching, and university administration has become indispensable. The new KI:Expertisezentrum.nrw aims to facilitate reliable, data-protection-compliant access to generative AI models for all students and staff in research and administration in North Rhine-Westphalia, while also building AI expertise. To this end, the expertise of the existing projects KI:edu.nrw, KI:connect.nrw, and Open Source-KI.nrw will be consolidated under one umbrella. The new center will begin operations on July 1, 2026. The Ministry of Culture and Science is funding the project – under the umbrella of the Digital University of North Rhine-Westphalia – with approximately 15.4 million euros till the end of 2030.

“Artificial intelligence is ubiquitous in people’s everyday lives – through chatbots, during medical examinations and diagnoses, and even in art and music. Wherever we rely on AI for support, user competence and data security must be guaranteed – regardless of individual commercial providers. The KI:Expertisezentrum.nrw is a milestone that will make the use of this key technology more natural and effective at all universities in North Rhine-Westphalia. In this way, we are strengthening North Rhine-Westphalia’s pioneering role in the field of AI in higher education,” says NRW Minister of Science Ina Brandes.

Ruhr University Takes the Lead

Ruhr University Bochum will lead the consortium of the new AI Center of Excellence. Other participants include RWTH Aachen University, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, the University of Cologne, Fern Universität Hagen, Cologne University of Applied Sciences, and Dortmund University of Applied Sciences.

Dr. Peter Salden, director of the KI:Expertisezentrum.nrw at Ruhr University Bochum, is pleased with the funding: “I am very pleased that the Ministry of Culture and Science, as well as all 36 NRW universities, are supporting our project. The KI:Expertisezentrum.nrw will bring together skills development, software development, and the provision of hardware infrastructure under one roof. North Rhine-Westphalia is thus creating a structure that is unique in Germany and, in my view, exemplary in terms of how the AI transformation at universities can be tackled collaboratively.”

The New Center of Expertise

The KI:Expertisezentrum.nrw will focus not only on academic studies and teaching but also on university administration.

Key Areas of Focus

There are three specific areas of focus within the project:

Competence: Faculty, students, and administrative staff will receive support through training, consulting, and networking to broadly embed AI competencies. In addition, legal issues will be clarified centrally for universities in North Rhine-Westphalia. This continues the work of the KI:edu.nrw project.
Inference: The groundwork is being laid to enable universities to access centrally hosted open-source or open-weight AI models. To this end, a shared hardware infrastructure is also being operated within the framework of DH.NRW to ensure that control over the technology and data remains in the hands of the universities and that independence from commercial providers is guaranteed. The preliminary work from the Open Source-KI.nrw project is being utilized here.
Apps: A central component is a state-wide platform that provides universities with access to commercial and non-commercial AI models. Many universities are already using this service, which was developed as part of the KI:connect.nrw project. The new project will also emphasize fact-based responses from AI models and coordinate and implement the programming of specialized applications in administration, as well as in teaching and learning.