Transfer of Science or Research, Cooperation agreements

The new KI:Expertisezentrum.nrw is designed to make it easier for students and staff in research and administration in North Rhine-Westphalia to gain reliable, data-protection-compliant access to generative AI models, and to expand their AI expertise base. On 1 July 2026, the new centre began operations. Under the umbrella of the Digital University of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia will be providing funding of approximately 15.4 million euros for the project until the end of 2030. Ruhr University Bochum is heading the consortium to establish the new KI:Expertisezentrum.nrw. In addition to the University of Cologne, the project also involves RWTH Aachen University, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, the FernUniversität Hagen and the universities of applied sciences in Cologne and Dortmund.

“Artificial intelligence is bringing about lasting changes in the way we conduct research, teach and work. This makes it all the more important for the University of Cologne to be working together with the other participating higher education institutions in actively shaping this development by combining scientific excellence with technological autonomy. With the KI:Expertisezentrum.nrw, we are laying the foundation to ensure that all participating universities in North Rhine-Westphalia can use artificial intelligence responsibly and to the highest standard,” says Professor Dr Joybrato Mukherjee, Rector of the University of Cologne.

Ina Brandes, Member of the State Parliament (MdL) and Minister of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia: “Artificial intelligence is now a ubiquitous part of people’s everyday lives, present in everything from chatbots to medical examinations and diagnoses, and even art and music. Wherever we are relying on AI for support, user competence, and data security must be guaranteed, independently of individual commercial providers. We have reached a milestone with the KI:Expertisezentrum.nrw, making the use of this key technology a matter of routine and more effective at universities across North Rhine-Westphalia. This will strengthen North Rhine-Westphalia’s pioneering role in the field of AI in higher education.”

The University of Cologne has made a significant contribution to the field of AI applications and inference, which refers to the actual ‘thinking process’ of AI during the application phase. The University strengthens the consortium with its many years of experience in the scalable operation of inference services and in the implementation of environments and applications for sensitive data.

“By pooling the expertise and infrastructure from our various sites, we are laying the foundations for providing locally operated open-weight models in a scalable and reliable way. This enables us to develop new application scenarios for AI at universities in North Rhine-Westphalia that involve confidential data or require significant resources,” says Professor Dr.-Ing. Stefan Wesner, Chief Information Officer and Director of the IT Center University of Cologne.

The project has three specific areas of focus. One is on providing targeted support to teaching staff, students and administrative staff through training, advice and networking, with the goal of helping them integrate comprehensive AI skills into their work. Legal issues are dealt with centrally for universities in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The groundwork is also 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 as part of the Digital University NRW initiative, so that the higher education institutions can maintain control over the technology and data and can operate independently from commercial providers.

A third area of focus is apps, with a key component being a nationwide platform that gives universities access to commercial and non-commercial AI models. Many universities are already using this platform, which was developed as part of the KI:connect.nrw project. The new project will also be concentrating on the production of factually accurate responses from AI models, as well as the coordination and implementation of programming for specialized administrative, teaching and learning applications.

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Wissenschaftlicher Ansprechpartner:
Anja Klinner
Public Relations, IT Center University of Cologne (ITCC)
+49 221 470 89542
klinner@uni-koeln.de

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Weitere Informationen:
https://ki-expertisezentrum.nrw/