In 1962, after lengthy debate, the Bavarian parliament decided to establish a Faculty of Engineering in Erlangen. Then, the University of Erlangen thus won out against the city of Nuremberg, which, for decades, had been demanding the establishment of a college of engineering in Nuremberg. Since the expansive areas of building land required for this project were not available in the center of Erlangen, the foundations for a new university campus were laid in the south east of the town in 1964. The formal establishment of the Faculty of Engineering, then the seventh faculty at the university, took place in 1966. What was unique at the time was that the various engineering departments were subsumed, as a faculty, into the main university rather than constituting an independent university. Present status The Faculty of Engineering at FAU is a young educational and research institution. Since its foundation in 1966. The Faculty has five departments: Electrical, Electronic and Communication Engineering Chemical and Biological Engineering Materials Science and Engineering (This Department was ranked at 10th best in the world according to the Quantitative Ranking of Engineering Disciplines (QRED).) Mechanical Engineering Computer Science The Faculty has close connections both with other natural sciences and with traditional subjects at the university. The Faculty of Engineering currently concentrates on the following research fields: New Materials and Processes Life Science Engineering and Medicine Technology Energy Technology and Mobility Modeling and Simulation Optics and Optical Technologies Information- and Communication Technologies Micro-/Nano-electronics Research Major research areas FAU claims leadership in a number of research topics. The current eight such major research areas are: New Materials and Processes Optics and Optical Technologies Molecular Life Science and Medicine Health Technology Electronics, Information and Communication Energy, Environment and Climate Language – Culture – Region Cohesion – Transformation – Innovation in Law and Economics Excellence initiative The Excellence Initiative by the German federal and state governments to promote science and research at German universities aims to promote cutting-edge research and to strengthen the higher education and research in Germany to improve its international competitiveness and to make top performers in academia and science visible. As part of this initiative, FAU was awarded the contract for the Erlangen Graduate School in Advanced Optical Technologies (SAOT), which received 1.9 million euros of annual funding for the next five years. The Cluster of Excellence 'Engineering of Advanced Materials and Processes' (EAM) was also established at FAU