In July 2026, the Graduate School Intelligent Methods for Test and Reliability marked six years of intelligent methods for test and reliability with a celebration at MotorWorld in Böblingen. What began as a bold experiment in university–industry collaboration between the University of Stuttgart and Advantest has grown into an established research hub: 24 doctoral researchers and 17 Principal Investigators, 134 scientific publications, four international awards, four Guest Professors, four IMTR Workshops at the IEEE European Test Symposium, and a first ASIC tape-out featuring a world-record-class, sub-picosecond time-to-digital converter.
The school’s impact reaches well beyond its own projects: a new Major “Intelligent Methods for Test and Reliability” in the international M.Sc. InfoTech, 68 supervised theses, and a new generation of experts — of our nine graduates so far, five have joined Advantest, with further doctorates already announced. The measurement data from our tape-out, free of confidentiality constraints, is being shared for machine-learning research in test and reliability, and our collaborations continue.