Alongside the German Research Foundation, the federal government is the university's largest provider of third-party funding. For example, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy fund long-term Copernicus projects for the energy transition and participation in the National Research Centre for Applied Cyber Security – Athene. At the same time, the state of Hesse supports excellent research at TU Darmstadt – for example on artificial intelligence, new energy technologies, nuclear physics and cognitive sciences.