Climate change: "It’s absolutely vital to act now"
Freigeist Fellow Niklas Boers develops novel prediction models for the earth and climate system. In this interview, he explains what findings they are already delivering - and what should be concluded from them.
Artificial Intelligence: Nearly 10 million euros in funding for new projects
With its "Artificial Intelligence" funding initiative, the Volkswagen Foundation is strengthening interdisciplinary and transnational research into the responsible further development of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. It is now funding seven project consortia from the social and technical sciences with a total of 9.8 million euros in this context.
Career planning has never been an easy matter for people working in research. Due to the pandemic, many are losing patience and optimism. How is the science system doing to counteract the impending brain drain?
As the covid crisis has shown: If scientific arguments are to be taken seriously in the public discourse and subsequently acted upon, researchers must make a greater effort to master the rules of today’s mediatized society. The following is a subjective situation report in five sequences.
Afghanistan: Special funding for refugee researchers
With special funding, the Volkswagen Foundation offers researchers who have fled Afghanistan the chance to continue their work in Germany. This is made possible by additional funds for funded projects and further fellowships at the Academy in Exile. A total of up to 2.9 million euros will be available for this purpose.
Detecting viruses, bacteria, tumor markers or dangerous environmental toxins quickly and accurately saves lives. Two innovative projects funded by the Foundation in the corona context show what effective diagnostics could look like in the future.
A small, rich minority is becoming increasingly wealthy. Eva Wegner and Miquel Pellicer ask: How does politics contribute to growing economic inequality – and whose interests do MPs actually represent?
So that everyone can have their say: Citizens' assembly on AI research
Rhetoric expert Anika Kaiser researches how people can make themselves heard on the major issues of our time – artificial intelligence (AI) being a case in point. She is the right person to take care that this grassroots democratic process does not remain too detached from reality: in her first life, she trained as a painter.
