2018/2019

Professor Andreas Breiter is Vice President for Research at the University of Bremen. In an interview, he explains how the university enriches the city and the surrounding region as well as the importance of community outreach in doing so. That the partnership with businesses is only one aspect quickly becomes apparent. In fact, transfer is a reciprocal process that affects all academic disciplines and civil society.

Whether school or adult education: the employees of the University of Bremen shape the educational landscape of the city-state with great dedication. Employees like historian Dr. Ulrike Huhn and mathematics educator Professor Christine Knipping are just two examples of these dedicated doers. They share their defining experiences from teaching certification, their enthusiasm for the Gröpelingen neighborhood in Bremen, and an understanding of knowledge transfer based on dialogue.

As part of the Citizen Science program, scientists work together with citizens to conduct their research. Current plans of the University of Bremen show how both sides are able to benefit. Thorsten Kluß from the Cognitive Neuroinformatics working group will make sensor technology available to beekeepers so that they can monitor their bee colonies. In return, the colonies will provide data that Kluß will use to gain insights into why the bees are dying out.

Whether in civic education or political consulting as part of digitization: political scientist Andreas Klee and computer scientist Juliane Jarke leave the university to hear from the citizens of Bremen themselves what motivates them and how they see the way people interact in society. Their objective is to enable people to make positive changes to how people interact in Bremen.

In Bremen, 2018 was the year of space travel. With the title of “Sternstunden 2018,” events were held for citizens of Bremen over a 12-month period. Numerous university employees were involved in the conceptualization of these events. The occasion for the event series was the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) at the beginning of October in Bremen. More than 19,000 people attended. Lead organizers of the IAC were Professor Marc Avila and his team from the Center for Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) at the University of Bremen.

To what extent does the colonial history of Bremen still impact the identity of the city today? Urban geographer Professor Julia Lossau and cultural anthropologist Professor Michi Knecht are investigating this question together with their teams, students, and local players outside the university. For them, outreach and knowledge transfer are part of a mutual process where the synergy of various perspectives creates added value for all.

The University of Bremen and its BRIDGE network have been successfully supporting the founding of start-ups and therefore supporting innovations for society: in the 2018 Gründungsradar of the Stifterverband, they ranked sixth among major higher education institutions in Germany. One example of a successful start-up from the university is the married couple Dr. Nina and Dr. Dirk Wenig, who developed a chat bot for businesses. For their idea, the computer scientists came in first place in the category for “Business Ideas” as part of the Bremen start-up competition CAMPUSiDEEN 2018, a finish endowed with a prize of 3,000 euros

Whether diabetes or obesity: researching chronic diseases and their prevention is at the center of the work of Professor Wolfgang Ahrens. The epidemiologist is a professor at the University of Bremen and the deputy director of the Bremen Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology (BIPS). Both institutions are members of the U Bremen Research Alliance. Ahrens’s work comprises a broad research field with social responsibility that necessitates an understanding of transfer oriented to society.

Whether in the form of Science Slam, Science goes Public, Wissen um 11, Forschungsmeile, or Explore Science – in Bremen, there are numerous methods of science communication engaging a broad audience. What do they have in common? It is often young researchers who are involved and communicating their subjects to the public in a comprehensible fashion. They agree on one thing: for them, publishing their own research is simply a part of everyday life in science. Anouk Vlug and Valentin Ludwig are two examples – they are working on their doctorates as part of the International Research Training Group ArcTrain at the University of Bremen along with eight Canadian partner universities.