Welcome to the Center for Science and Thought
The Center for Science and Thought (CST) is a radically interdisciplinary platform designed to address urgent questions that arise at the intersection of philosophy and various natural sciences.
The CST is located at Konrad-Zuse-Platz 1-3, 53227 Bonn.
Current News of the CST
On May 29, 2025, the seminar series titled Cross-Cultural Approaches to Desirable AI received the AI ELSI Award (Perspective Division) from the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI).
30. June / 01. July 2025 at Center for Science and Thought, University of Bonn
How and why is the relationship between freedom and unfreedom changing in our technologized present? And what visions of the future can we imagine through feminist approaches?
We will explore these questions over the course of the symposium Technological Futures Now: Racism, Imperialism, and the Surrogate Human Effect (June 30/ July 1 at CST, University of Bonn) together with Visiting Professors Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora and international guest speakers (Nishant Shah, Erin McElroy and others, tba).
The Tucano project has won 1st place in the Most Interesting Results Competition at Bonn University's High Performance Computing (HPC) services. The competition occurred during the 1st anniversary event of Marvin, the university’s state-of-the-art Tier 3 HPC cluster, where researchers gathered to showcase their work powered by Marvin’s computational capabilities. Tucano, a series of natively pre-trained large language models for Portuguese, is fully open-source and was developed at the University of Bonn with the support of Marvin.
Here you can find additional news6.
Events of the CST
September 15 2025 @IZPH
This workshop explores how emerging technologies can move beyond minimal compliance to foster reliability and sustainable practices. We bring together experts to explore key issues at the intersection of ethics, governance, and technology, featuring a presentation of the GAIA Report, followed by two panel discussions.
September 10 - 12 2025 @CST
From September 10 till 12 2025 the philosophy team of "Zertifizierte KI" will host their final conference at the CST and online. We are looking forward to discussing our project results with you.
June 30 & July 01 2025 @CST
This two-day symposium takes Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological Futures by Kalindi Vora and Neda Atanasoski as a generative starting point for urgent feminist and antiracist conversations about technology in our current moment.
Here you can find more events9.
Research of the CST
The aim of the project is to develop procedures to examine generally accepted standards for AI systems and their verification, as well as to explore business models for an AI certification. Our research investigates the ethical-philosophical significance of these dimensions.
Rethinking AI for Just and Sustainable Futures.
We investigate how to design AI (artificial intelligence) and other digital technologies in a responsible way, placing the questions of social justice and environmental sustainability at the very heart of our work.
Our research program is a collaboration between the Universities of Cambridge and Bonn and numerous international partners, and is funded by the Mercator Foundation in Germany.
The 'Towards New Demarcation Criteria for Borderline Consciousness' Project is an interdisciplinary project involving a collaboration between philosophers of Bonn and Cambridge and neuroscientists from the epilepsy clinic in Bonn. Its main purpose is to create an international research forum to develop new criteria for determining whether and when non-human entities, such as non-linguistic animals, new brain organisms, or advanced AI systems can be considered conscious.
You can find more information about our research projects here.13
We connect female* students, scientists at all career levels as well as employees from technology and administration who research and work in various disciplines on artificial intelligence (AI) at the University of Bonn.
Our goal is to bring women* at the University of Bonn together, increase their visibility and engage in a critical exchange about AI. As a female* network, “Feminist AI” supports the interdisciplinary dialog on artificial intelligence and contributes to the strengthening of female* researchers at the University of Bonn.
The network is supported by the Equal Opportunities Office of the University of Bonn with funds from the Fund for the Promotion of the Structural Anchoring of Gender Equality.
You can find a selection of publications here15.
Register here here16 for our AI-Mailinglist.
Links
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/home/what_is_the_cst
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/home/how-to-find-us.pdf
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/en_news/seminar-series-cross-cultural-approaches-to-desirable-ai-receives-ai-elsi-award-perspective-division-from-the-japanese-society-for-artificial-intelligence
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/events/technological-futurs-now-racism-imperialism-and-the-surrogate-human-effect
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/en_news/tucano-projekt-gewinnt-1-platz-in-der-most-interesting-results-competition
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/en_news/press-releases-1
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/events/workshop-beyond-compliance
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/research/standardization-of-ai-ethics-final-conference
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/events
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/research/certified-ai
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/research/desirable_digitalisation
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/research/borderline_consciousness
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/research
- https://www.gleichstellung.uni-bonn.de/feminist-ai/en/feministai
- https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/research/publications
- https://listen.uni-bonn.de/wws/info/philosophy_and_ai