Nazi German Student Union organised a book burning at the Bismarck Column on Räcknitzhöhe in 1933.

[4] Victor Klemperer, Gustav Kafka, Richard Seyfert, Hans Gehrig were expelled or forced to resign.

In 2009 TU Dresden, all Dresden institutes of the Fraunhofer Society, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Scientific Community and the Max Planck Society and Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, soon incorporated into the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, published a joint letter of intent with the name DRESDEN-Konzept – Dresden Research and Education Synergies for the Development of Excellence and Novelty, which points out worldwide elite aspirations, which was recognized as the first time that all four big post-gradual elite institutions declared campus co-operation with a university.

The main campus, as well as the medical faculty and that of computer science, are all within the boundaries of the city of Dresden.

The main campus is located south of the city center, mostly in the area bordered by Nöthnitzer Straße, Fritz-Förster-Platz and Münchner Platz; the medical faculty can be found in the Johannstadt district.

The school of sciences is composed of five faculties: Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics and Psychology.

As part of the German Universities Excellence Initiative, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft has decided to fund the Cluster of Excellence "From Cells to Tissues to Therapies: Engineering the Cellular Basis of Regeneration" (now Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD) [de]), as well as a new graduate school, the "Dresden International Graduate School for Biomedicine and Bioengineering" with about 300 PhD students.

It hosts top international research groups dedicated to genomics, proteomics, biophysics, cellular machines, tissue engineering, and bioinformatics.

The research at the CRTD and BIOTEC is complemented by that of the B CUBE which aims to learn from nature and translate the new knowledge into technological applications.

[9] The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft funds research in the area of electromagnetic flow influence in metallurgy, artificial crystal formation and electrochemistry.

TU Dresden is incorporated in this network with three departments of the faculties of Electrical Engineering and Sciences.

Together with the Fraunhofer Center for Nano-electronic technologies (CNT), it represents one of the leading universities in the field of nanotechnology.

[11] The Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2024 places the institution at 161st globally and 16th within the nation.

[12] In the ARWU World Rankings for 2023, the university's position is in the 201–300 range globally, and between 10th and 19th place nationally.

[19] As one of the first universities in Germany it has opened a branch in Hanoi, Vietnam offering a Master's course in mechatronics.

Ranked by countries the largest group of students comes from China (710), followed by Poland (294), Vietnam (196), Bulgaria (160) and Russia (154).

The university is also quite popular among Central and East European countries such as the neighboring Czech Republic or Ukraine.

Most notably the Erasmus-Initiative TU Dresden offers many group activities throughout the semester which are open to all students (not only to Erasmus participants).

With regard to its ability to generate research money from industry partners, the TU Dresden belongs to the most successful in Germany.