Welcome to the Berlin University Alliance
Dear colleagues, partners, and friends,
we live in a time marked by multiple crises and challenges: from the accelerating impacts of climate change, especially in urban areas, to the urgent task of building resilient and equitable healthcare systems; from the need to strengthen social cohesion and peaceful coexistence in the face of migration, inequality, and polarization, to the opportunities and risks of digitalization – with quantum technologies potentially transforming how we confront global challenges altogether.
All of these issues are global in nature, highly complex, and deeply interconnected. No single discipline, institution, or sector can address them alone. That’s why we come together across academic fields, sectors, generations, and borders to understand the problems in their full complexity, explore ideas and possibilities that rise to the scale of the challenges.
That is the spirit in which the Berlin University Alliance was founded and in which it operates: working across disciplines and institutions in the unique science landscape of the German capital and the Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan area, in the interaction of universities, research institutes, and civil society actors.
Our mission is to foster exchange between cutting-edge research and industry, culture, politics, and the public.
Berlin offers the ideal setting for this endeavor. It is a city defined by resilience, reinvention, and the power of crossing boundaries. In a place where walls once stood, we now build connections between people, ideas, and future possibilities and thus develop a central space for responsible innovation in Europe.
The Grand Challenges Conference is an invitation to be part of that process: to think differently, work together, across walls and boundaries, and to unlock the potential to help shape a better tomorrow. Thank you for being part of that.
Prof. Dr. Günter M. Ziegler
President of Freie Universität Berlin
Spokesperson of the Berlin University Alliance