Johannes Kepler University Linz

Institution Info

The Johannes Kepler University (JKU) in Linz, one of the most modern universities in Austria, was founded in 1966 as an Academy for Social and Economic Sciences. Teaching and research activities initially began with a faculty focused on academic studies in the the fields of social sciences, economics and legal studies, serving a student body of approximately 600. The Faculty of Technical and Natural Sciences was introduced in 1969, followed by the Faculty of Law in 1975. In the same year, the Academy transitioned to become the Johannes Kepler University (JKU), named after the world-famous and renowned mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler.

In the beginning, the idea of a “university campus setting” was a completely new concept in Austria. Situated on the north-eastern outskirts of the Upper Austrian capital of Linz, the campus accommodates approximately 16,000 students and employs over 2,000 faculty and staff. JKU currently offers 29 Bachelor, Masters and Doctorate programs.

JKU – Impulse Center for Science and Society

From the start, the JKU depicted a new style of university offering interdisciplinary combinations between the fields of economics, social science, law, natural science and engineering, as well as a concentrated focus on its obligations to the community and economy. Today, the JKU not only provides expertise in basic research, but is also the province’s largest institution of application-oriented research.

Subsequently, in addition to traditional institutes, the university has seen an increasing number of institutes funded by third parties and, more recently, the introduction of competence centers which are privately owned companies and other organizations that reflect the important role JKU plays within the economy of Upper Austria. These include: the Research Institute of Symbolic Computation (RISC), the Software Competence Center Hagenberg, the Institute of Application-oriented Knowledge Processing (Anwendungsorientierte Wissensverarbeitung (FAW)), Numerical and Symbolic Scientific Computing. In addition to the SCCH Hagenberg, the competence centers include the ACCM (Austrian Competence Center in Mechtronics) and the Competence Center in Wood. These university institutes cooperate with large companies as well as small and medium-sized companies that specialize in these particular fields.