Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Karlsruhe, Germany is the lone European entry in the ISC’12 Student Cluster Competition. As such, they’re carrying a huge weight on their solid Teutonic shoulders. KIT, as Team Germany, is charged with defending home-country student clustering honor vs. powerhouse teams from China and the U.S.

But KIT seems well equipped to meet the challenge. Founded in 1825, it’s one of Germany’s leading science, engineering, and technical universities. Mathematics and Natural Sciences, along with Engineering Sciences, are the main focus of 74% of their 22,552 student population. Their Steinbuch Centre for Computing (SCC) gives researchers access to several large clusters based on Intel, AMD, and POWER processors.

The university boasts a slate of alumni who have changed the world. Some of the most notable:

• Karl Benz – inventor of the automobile
• Karl Ferdinand Braun – inventor of the cathode ray tube (CRT); built the first CRT oscilloscope. Probably did not invent the Braun line of cooking and household appliances.
• Heinrich Rudolf Hertz – the guy who discovered electromagnetic waves in 1887 and namesake of the ‘hertz’ measurement of frequency.
• Edward Teller – father of the hydrogen bomb

There’s a long list of other illustrious science types who made a lot of other discoveries. KIT alumni have also carved out a solid reputation in IT and business. Almost all of the founders of SAP, for example, are KIT grads.

Absent from this list, however, is any record of a KIT team winning either an SC or ISC Student Cluster Competition. A win here would probably be the capstone event of KIT’s 187-year history; a time when alumni, faculty, and students can sit back and say, “Yes, we’ve finally arrived.” Well, maybe not… but it still would be a feather in their collective (and quite stylish) Alpine hats.