In 2002, four institutes of RWTH Aachen University (Institute of Metal Forming, Institute of Ferrous Metallurgy, Institute of Process Metallurgy and Metal Recycling, Foundry Institute) founded a research network for innovative high performance metals. The name "champ" (Centre of highly advanced metals and processes) was chosen for the increasing number of joint activities, which have taken place since the foundation of the network.

The aec (Aluminium Engineering Center) is an association of eight university departments dedicated to the processing of aluminum.

Centre of competence for the technology dealing with the processing of resources.

"Steel - ab initio; quantum mechanics guided design of new Fe based materials"

This cooperation of the RWTH Aachen University and the Max-Planck- Institute of Iron Research in Duesseldorf (MPIE) is financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The management board is set up with Prof. Wolfgang Bleck (Institute of Ferrous Metallurgy, RWTH Aachen University) as the speaker of the SFB and with Prof. Dierk Raabe (MPIE) as the deputy speaker.  

Three major topics are treated in this research unit:

• Development of a new method for material- and process-development based on ab initio calculations.
• Materialdesign of a new class of structural materials with extraordinary property combinations.
• Acceleration of development time and reduction of experimental efforts and complexity for material- and process-development.

The project started on July 1st 2007 and was, in the first instance, financed for four years.  Due to a good co-operation and promising research results, a second research period has been granted from July 1st 2011 for another four years.