The proposed Center for Advanced Photonics at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich is among three "excellence clusters" that will receive funding through a Germany-wide Excellence Iniative to promote university research and education, it was announced Friday. The initiative was launched last June by Germany’s federal and state governments and is being overseen by the German Research Foundation and the German Science Council. LMU Munich will also receive funding for two other excellence clusters, a graduate school, and for its "future concept." The other excellence clusters are the Munich Center for Integrated Protein Science, which will explore the complex roles of proteins at the molecular level, and the Nanosystems Initiative Munich, which will comprise experts from biology, medicine and electrotechnology to develop new nanotechnologies and applications. The photonics center will explore advances in light source technology to enable interdisciplinary collaboration in photonics. The clusters will involve researchers from different disciplines as well as from the Technische Universität Munich; the schools will also collaborate with the Max Planck Institutes and industry partners. At LMU Munich's Graduate School of Systematic Neurosciences (GSN) researchers from cellular and system-oriented neurosciences as well as neurophilosophers will form a unique network to explore fundamental issues in areas such as computational neurosciences, neurophysiology and neuropsychology. Funding for the university's "future concepts" for promoting top research will help strengthen its recruitment, investment, teaching and management structures.