In 2012, in the third round of the Excellence Initiative, the university was able to successfully extend funding for the Spemann Graduate School of Biology and Medicine, as well as bioss, while also gaining funding for a new cluster called BrainLinks-Brain Tools, an interdisciplinary neurotechnology project.
The genetically engineered golden rice was developed by the University of Freiburg (Peter Beyer) and the ETH Zurich (Ingo Potrykus) from 1992 to 2000.