At the time of Johann W. von Goethe, network thinking was not relevant in science; an individual fighting spirit characterized the everyday life of a scientist. Cooperation in engineering science has become a necessity today in order to provide answers to interdisciplinary issues. Against this background, a four-year research project of the American National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been started with the participation of TU Graz, with the aim of understanding the growth of abdominal aortic aneurysms.

Thomas Young (1773-1829) is called as "The Last Man Who Knew Everything" ¹ . He was a polymath who proved Newton wrong, explained how we see, deciphered the Rosetta Stone together with Champollion, and recognized the importance of combining mathematical physics with biological experiments to better understand physiological and pathological processes (see Figure 1). He was also the person who developed Young's modulus, a material parameter in materials science named after him and known by every student of engineering science. Quite literally, Young's research cooperation was with himself.

About 200 years later, we are living in a period of networking and globalization, in which a single person may achieve very little by himself. Thomas Young probably would not have been comfortable with our present degree of specialization. Today's science seeks an interdisciplinary approach precisely because of this specialization - an interdisciplinary approach in which the cooperation of experts promotes reciprocal advances. And this particularly holds true for engineering sciences.  Here cooperation includes cooperation between research units of different universities, national and international, and within an in-house interdisciplinary research group. Robert S. Langer, pioneer of tissue engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and laureate of the 2002 Charles Stark Draper Prize (considered the Nobel Prize of engineering science), is probably the best example of the success of a cooperative endeavor in a technical discipline. Langer set up his own research institute, where engineers work together very successfully with medical doctors, mathematicians, geneticists, materials scientists, cell biologists, chemists, and physicists ³ .

International cooperation in research and development enhances the work at every university of technology that is willing to face the global challenges of today's complex world. This cooperation is greatly facilitated by electronic communication. Graz University of Technology successfully cooperates in research and teaching with several universities, extramural research facilities, and companies. TU Graz has numerous academic cooperation agreements and strategic partnerships and an active presence on nearly all continents ⁴ .