The Excellence Initiative spearheaded by the German federal and state governments aims to allow more worldclass research in Germany in the coming years. To this end funding of 1.9 billion Euros is being made available nationwide up to the year 2011. These funds should contribute to enhancing the international competitiveness of German universities. In a multiple-stage process in 2007 the international jury appointed by the DFG (German Research Foundation) made funding awards available in response to both the application for a Cluster of Excellence on the topic „Multimodal Computing and Interaction“ in Saarbrücken and the concept of an international Graduate School for Computer Science. Together the two projects will receive funding of about 40 million Euros from the federal and state governments between 2008 and 2012.