“Further uniting our forces”

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"Further uniting our forces"

A new research field combining artificial intelligence and biomedicine is starting in Dresden

In the presence of Minister President Michael Kretschmer and Minister of Science Sebastian Gemkow, representatives of the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation, the Max Planck Society, and TUD Dresden University of Technology gathered at the Saxon State Chancellery to sign a contract for the establishment of the innovative research program "Biomedical Artificial Intelligence (AI) - BioAI Dresden." All project partners and the Free State of Saxony have agreed on joint funding of over 40 million euros.

© KI-Bild: Midjourney / MPG

The non-profit Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation is supporting the project with EUR 20 million over a period of ten years, thereby providing half of the EUR 40 million total. The Max Planck Society, TU Dresden and the Free State of Saxony are financing the other half of the project, which aims to facilitate research in the field of biological and biomedical AI. To this end, a new division with two research groups is being established at the Center for Systems Biology Dresden (CSBD), an inter-institutional centre jointly run by the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG), the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (MPIPKS) and TUD Dresden University of Technology.

The new research division will also work in close partnership with the AITHYRA Institute in Vienna, which was established in September 2024 and is also funded by the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation. DeepMind Professor Michael Bronstein has been recruited as Founding Director for this unique European Institute devoted to artificial intelligence in the field of biomedicine.

BioAI Dresden combines innovative AI methods with knowledge from biochemistry and physics across the entire spectrum of biology, with the aim of making a decisive contribution to a new scientific understanding of our health. The selection and appointment of directors and research group leaders will follow the excellence criteria and procedures of the Max Planck Society.

The combination of biomedicine and artificial intelligence holds enormous potential - potential that can only be realized through comprehensive and interdisciplinary collaboration. This is why BioAI Dresden and the AITHYRA Institute are seeking out partnerships with outstanding research institutions such as the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) with its six sites in Europe, EPFL - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, the University of Oxford, and the Broad Institute in the USA. The new research project will enable Dresden to fully use and develop its potential.

"The MPG has long been a European driving force in the field of AI. The journal NATURE lists us in 7th place among the top 10 "Rising Institutions in Artificial Intelligence". In collaboration with the Austrian Academy of Sciences and with the support of the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation, we now want to join forces further in this area of research," says Max Planck President Patrick Cramer. "After all, there are many good reasons not to leave this field to the big tech companies alone. Basic research can and will address questions that profit-driven companies do not take up, but which can be of great benefit to the general public."