UniSysCat is an interdisciplinary research network working jointly on coupled reactions in catalysis. To master this challenge, our research groups are comprising molecular and structural biologists, biochemists and biophysicists, physical and theoretical chemists as well as physicists.

Writing is one of humanity’s central cultural techniques. Over millennia, it has shaped societies and survived every social and technological revolution. The significance of handwriting is not limited to the content of what is written; it is also revealed in the materials used, writing tools, contexts of use, and the manner in which written artefacts are processed, passed on, and preserved. Inscribed stone tablets, palm-leaf manuscripts, papyrus rolls, medieval codices, graffiti — the diversity of artefacts reflects the wide range of functions that handwriting has fulfilled and continues to fulfil in daily life.

The promise of human rights to protect people everywhere from abuses and injustices and to enable them to live in equal dignity remains unfulfilled for most of the world’s population despite the growth of human rights instruments, institutions, and organizations. Furthermore, skepticism in academic discourses and the open rejection of human rights by many states and political actors are on the rise.

Societies worldwide are undergoing rapid transformations, and technology plays a crucial yet ambiva-lent role in these transformations – as seen in recent debates about artificial intelligence, neurotech-nologies, and autonomous systems. Despite its centrality, technology often remains peripheral in the portfolio of social science disciplines, with many theories neglecting technology as an explicit or essen-tial factor. Theories of justice and democracy, for instance, often treat their core concerns as if they were separable from technology and innovation. Simultaneously, major technology development ef-forts often regard social science as an afterthought. This disconnect leaves us ill-equipped to address interconnected global challenges, growing distrust in technologies and experts, and the transformative impact of technologies on our lives.

The ocean floor is the largest interface in the Earth system, where geological, physical, biological, and chemical processes drive global biogeochemical element cycling and climate dynamics. The Cluster addresses key gaps in process understanding on the global role of the ocean floor by quantifying interconnected budgets of energy, carbon and other elements as well as their dynamically changing properties under warming conditions.

The continuous geographic and demographic expansion of humankind has relied on the assumption of essentially unlimited resources and particularly on the massive exploitation of fossil fuels. This has set us on a path toward a rapidly deteriorating environment and an impending age of scarcity, which will challenge the very fundamentals of nearly all production technologies. Accordingly, various research efforts are now focused on achieving a more sustainable, efficient and automated production.

The future will be renewable! Shaping a post-fossil era mandates the development of disruptive technologies for the production and use of liquid energy carriers and chemical products as basis for a truly sustainable energy-chemistry nexus within the planetary boundaries. Energyrich molecules harnessing renewable energy jointly with renewable material feedstocks offer an important contribution to the defossilization of the transport sector. This applies especially to long-haul, heavy duty, and non-road applications, which are difficult or even impossible to electrify, yet have significant contributions to the total energy demand. At the same time, energyrich molecules are essential components for a net-zero production of chemicals serving as the foundation for nutrition, health, and prosperity.

The goal of The Adaptive Mind is to transform our scientific understanding of how humans adapt to changing conditions. Our results will not only answer one of the deepest questions in the sciences of the mind, but also open new avenues for individualised approaches to mental health, and the creation of robust, human-aligned artificial intelligence systems. Adaptability is possibly the most remarkable feature of the human mind.

The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and other resources we use, have resulted from interactions between the Earth’s geosphere and biosphere. Understanding these interactions is thus essential for human survival and wellbeing, which are endangered by anthropogenically induced climate and land-use change. While contemporary anthropogenic pressures are unprecedented, the processes and natural laws governing the Earth System remain universal.

The Cluster of Excellence 2020 "Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective" aims to create a new theoretical and methodological take on literature in a global perspective that moves beyond the categories of nation and period and conceives of literature instead as a transcultural and transtemporal phenomenon in deep time.