The joint project of the Clusters of Excellence "Matters of Activity" and "Science of Intelligence", "Wenn Materie lebendig wird" has been funded by the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) since last year. Strengthening multidirectional knowledge exchange between universities and other key stakeholders is one of BUA's core goals.
BUA defines knowledge exchange as a multidirectional process through which scientific ideas and research results are disseminated to the public and external perspectives are fed back into research. Science communication is one of the three central pillars of the knowledge exchange strategy of the Berlin University Alliance between Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Technische Universität Berlin, as well as Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin. The goal of the science communication experimental labs is to test new models and methods of science communication with an experimental approach in a thematic but cross-institutional context.
The experimental laboratory "Wenn Materie lebendig wird" is dedicated to socially highly relevant changes and therein to a knowledge production process that cannot take place in isolated research spaces, but is intended to involve various social groups in a participatory process using innovative methods.
The lab offers the excellence clusters "Matters of Activity" and "Science of Intelligence", opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and an exciting interweaving with new formats and perspectives from the humanities, robotics and design. In doing so, the clusters address quite fundamentally different aspects:
While the cluster "Matters of Activity. Image-Space-Material" aims to create a basis for a new culture of materials. The central vision of the cluster is the rediscovery of the analog in the activity of images, spaces and materials in the age of the digital. Biology and technology, mind and material, nature and culture intertwine in new ways. In this context, interdisciplinary research and development of sustainable practices and structures is a central concern in areas such as architecture and soft robotics, textiles, materials and digital filters, and surgical cutting techniques.
"Science of Intelligence," on the other hand, is devoted more to questions in the natural sciences, such as the question of the principles of intelligence that are common to all forms of intelligence, whether artificial or biological, robotic, computer program, human, or animal. Or the one about how we can apply these principles to create intelligent technology. Answering it - in an ethically responsible way - is the central scientific goal of the cluster.
Principal Investigators and project managers are: Léa Perraudin, Martin Müller, Prof. Dr. Oliver Brock, Dr. Dimitri Coelho Mollo, Prof. Dr. Claudia Mareis, Antje Nestler, Steffen Puhlmann, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schäffner and Solveig Steinhardt.
Updates on the project will be available on the website in the near future.