In 1980, Schulten became a professor of theoretical physics at the Technical University of Munich. In 1988, Hartmut Michel, Johann Deisenhofer, and Robert Huber won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for determining the three-dimensional structure of the photosynthetic reaction center. Their elucidation of the reaction center's structure made it feasible for Klaus Schulten to develop simulations models of photosynthesis. Schulten later worked with Michel and Deisenhofer on models of LH2 in photosynthesis.
Schulten recognized that a successful attack on modeling the photosynthetic reaction center would require parallel computing power. He used his research grants to support Munich students Helmut Grubmüller and Helmut Heller in building a custom parallel computer optimized for molecular dynamics simulations. They developed a parallel computer, the T60, containing ten circuit boards with six Transputers each, for a total of 60 nodes. The T60 was small enough that Schulten was able to carry it through customs in a backpack, when he moved to the United States to join the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The T60's parallel computing software, which the students named EGO, was written in OCCAM II.