 From 2001 to 2004 he was First Dean of the new Department of Computer Science of the university, and from 2005 to 2014 president of the University of Hannover, since renamed Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover to mark the 175th anniversary of the university in 2006.During his presidency, an alliance of three universities of technology in Lower Saxony was formed.It was named (Niedersachsen Institutes of Technology, NTH), the other partners being the Technische Universität Braunschweig and the Technische Universität Clausthal (Clausthal University of Technology).