Science City Hamburg-Bahrenfeld“There’s a Lot of Science in the City—and There Should Be Even More”

28 May 2024, by Claudia Sewig

Photo: Claudia Höhne

Prof. Dr. Tilo Böhrmann is vice-president for research and head of the IT management and consulting research group at Universität Hamburg.

Futuristic new buildings, excellent cutting-edge research, exciting spin-offs, and soon, even more teaching: the development of Science City Hamburg-Bahrenfeld is important not just for Universität Hamburg but for the city as a whole. Prof. Dr. Tilo Böhmann, vice president for research, explains what is going on now, and in the future, and issues an invitation to Science City Day.

Universität Hamburg has many campuses where innovative research and excellent teaching are taking place. Why is Science City Hamburg-Bahrenfeld being talked about so often right now?

Because it is a place of extreme development right now. In terms of research, Science City Hamburg-Bahrenfeld is a very active campus with 2 clusters of excellence, a lot of external partners, and now, new, significant teaching in physics. It is also a place for innovation, with researchers from the University and its partners inventing new things, and founding companies. That is why we can say that there is a lot going on there right now: important, exciting things in basic research, in teaching, in application, and in knowledge exchange.

It is also a place of significant construction. We have just opened the building on Albert-Einstein-Ring 8–10 after renovation, and research groups from digital natural sciences and bioinformatics have moved in, as well as the basic practical courses for physics students. In the future, we will have HAFUN, a new research building in the Science City for physics working groups striving to find answers from fields across cosmological and particle physics, researching into questions like dark matter, and the properties of the Higgs particle. And the whole thing is of course also part of urban planning competitions that are rethinking the whole district. You can really see the potential of a true Science City, where research, work, and living are closely bound.

Which Universität Hamburg departments are already represented, and what areas are moving there in the future? What more needs to be built or renovated?

Universität Hamburg is mainly represented in the field of physics within a range of institutions at Bahrenfeld. In addition, we have for example, the research buildings HARBOR, the Hamburg Advanced Research Centre for Bioorganic Chemistry at the interface of natural sciences and life sciences, the Center for Hybrid Nanostructures, or CHYN for short, that looks at nanostructure research at the interface for material research, and the Center for Structural Systems Biology CSSB, that follows an integrated structural biological approach. So, that is a broad range of very strong research institutions!

The construction of the auditorium center, the conference center, and the learning centers will mark a huge leap forward for Universität Hamburg. That will bring the number of students on campus to over 6000, with all the extra dynamism that brings. This will be followed by the new chemistry building, which will bring a central field of natural science research to Science City In addition, a new, joint computing center for Hamburg universities is also planned for Bahrenfeld, as is moving parts of the Department of Biology. It is all contained with the Excellence Cluster Quantum Universe (QU) and CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter, which will have its base on the premises.

Our partnerships on the campus are essential for all this, particularly the PIER strategic partnership with the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY). Thanks to the University and external research institutions, such as DESY, there really is a lot of science in the City. Now we are looking to develop an attractive campus for students and researchers that not only offers excellent buildings and infrastructure, but also boasts inviting spaces between the buildings.

What is the goal behind moving institutions and faculties to Bahrenfeld?

This co-location will create the conditions for more interdisciplinary and outstanding research into the future. The pooling of scientific potential can significantly drive further scientific development at Science City. The physical proximity between a range of disciplines can make better use of synergies, not only because it brings clever minds together, but because of the access to excellent research infrastructure. Science City Hamburg-Bahrenfeld should therefore provide an attractive environment for cutting-edge research, and thus act as a magnet for excellent national and international researchers.

Won’t other Universität Hamburg locations lose some of their significance?

No, of course not! That is the most interesting part, all three big campuses each have their own development projects, all showing interesting prospects. That means that specific, careful thought needs to be given to the specific strengths and opportunities of that particular location. These can then be built upon later.

One of the University’s goals is opening to society. What opportunities does Science City offer?

Right now, we are opening our doors to anyone who is interested on 1 July 2024 from 11 am–7 pm, for our first Science City Day. We sincerely invite you to get to know Science City, if you don’t know it yet, and have a look into the mixing pot of research. The open day is also intended to show that Science City is not closed off, to show how it could work to become an open city district that can and should be discovered.

We already give school students and teachers a fantastic glimpse into cutting-edge scientific research on an almost daily basis, with the Universität Hamburg’s Light & Schools physics school lab. The concept could be extended, for example to offer Molecules & Schools, or Cells & Schools labs as well. Or even something more: a new school is planned within Science City. Of course, it would be great if it was a school specializing in natural sciences, and we could work in close collaboration, to make a kind of Science School.

And we are already looking at knowledge exchange on other social levels in Science City. That is why, for example, on German Unity Day, 200 citizens from all over Germany visited the premises to find out about quantum computing, resulting in active exchange, showing that providing these kinds of insights into basic research processes can be very successful.

In addition, Science City is already serving as an innovation incubator, and this role will only increase. The results the area has already delivered can form the basis of new technical innovations, that then flow into established companies or result in new start-ups. This development, and of course the world-class research being conducted there, makes Science City a talent magnet that draws the most brilliant minds from around the world. That will also play an important role for the metropolitan region as a whole.