Berlin is the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, as measured by population within city limits. Simultaneously, the city is one of the states of Germany, and is the third smallest state in the country in terms of area. Berlin is surrounded by the state of Brandenburg, and Brandenburg's capital Potsdam is nearby. The urban area of Berlin has a population of over 4.5 million and is therefore the most populous urban area in Germany. The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region has around 6.2 million inhabitants and is Germany's second-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr region, and the fifth-biggest metropolitan region by GDP in the European Union.
Joseph Weizenbaum was a German American computer scientist and a professor at MIT. The Weizenbaum Award and Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society – The German Internet Institute are named after him.
Karlheinz Brandenburg is a German electrical engineer and mathematician. Together with Ernst Eberlein, Heinz Gerhäuser, Bernhard Grill, Jürgen Herre and Harald Popp, he developed the widespread MP3 method for audio data compression. He is also known for his elementary work in the field of audio coding, the perception measurement, the wave field synthesis and psychoacoustics. Brandenburg has received numerous national and international research awards, prizes and honors for his work. Since 2000 he has been a professor of electronic media technology at the Technical University Ilmenau. Brandenburg was significantly involved in the founding of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology (IDMT) and currently serves as its director.
Berlin Brandenburg Airport Willy Brandt is an international airport in Schönefeld, just south of the German capital and state of Berlin, in the state of Brandenburg. Named after the former West Berlin mayor and West German chancellor Willy Brandt, it is located 18 kilometres (11 mi) south-east of the city centre and serves as a base for Eurowings, easyJet and Ryanair. It mostly has flights to European metropolitan and leisure destinations as well as a number of intercontinental services.
The Free University of Berlin is a public research university in Berlin. It was founded in West Berlin in 1948 with American support during the early Cold War period as a Western continuation of the Friedrich Wilhelm University, or the University of Berlin, whose traditions and faculty members it retained. The Friedrich Wilhelm University, being in East Berlin, faced strong communist repression; the Free University's name referred to West Berlin's status as part of the Western Free World, contrasting with communist-controlled East Berlin.
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in the world. It is the largest concentration of universities and colleges in Germany. The city has four public research universities and 27 private, professional and technical colleges (Hochschulen), offering a wide range of disciplines. Access to the German university system is tuition free.
The Hertie School is a German private, independent graduate school for governance located in Berlin. Hertie School is accredited to confer master's and doctoral degrees. Half of the school's students are international, with more than 95 countries represented among alumni and currently enrolled students. The working language is English.
The Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering gGmbH is an information technology non-profit company affiliated with the University of Potsdam in Potsdam, Brandenburg, northeastern Germany.
The Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association in Berlin is one of the 18 institutions that make up the Helmholtz Association. It combines basic molecular biology research with clinical research and is dedicated to the research foci of systems medicine and cardiovascular diseases. The research center is named after the Berlin-born biophysicist and Nobel laureate Max Delbrück. The center is headed by Maike Sander.
The WZB Berlin Social Science Center, also known by its German initials WZB, is an internationally renowned research institute for the social sciences, the largest such institution in Europe not affiliated with a university.
Kai A. Konrad is a German economist with his main research interest in public economics.
The Institute for Media and Communication Policy (IfM) was founded in 2005 as an independent research institution that is exclusively dedicated to issues surrounding media and communication policies. It was established in February 2006 in Berlin-Charlottenburg, but in November 2014 it moved to Cologne. The institute is funded by leading German public and private media organizations.
Peter-André Alt is a German literary scholar, former president of the Freie Universitaet of Berlin and, since August 2018, president of the German Rectors' Conference (HRK). Alt is married to the writer Sabine Alt and has two adult sons.
The Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems, or FOKUS, is an organization of the Fraunhofer Society. Headquartered in Berlin (Charlottenburg), the institute is engaged in applied research and development in the field of Information and Communications Technology. The institute is jointly led by Prof. Manfred Hauswirth and Dr. Tom Ritter. Manfred Hauswirth also holds a chair in at the Technische Universität Berlin. Dr. Tom Ritter is the institute's deputy director.
Naika Foroutan is a German social scientist.
Johanna Barbara Stachel is a German nuclear physicist. She is a professor in experimental physics at the University of Heidelberg. Stachel is a former president of the German Physical Society (DPG).
The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) is a research institution in Berlin. Its stated mission is to research “the development of the internet from a societal perspective with the aim of better understanding the accompanying digitalisation of all areas of life.”
Sabine Kunst is a German engineer, academic and politician who has been serving as chairwoman of the Joachim Herz Foundation since 2022.
The Cluster of Excellence Unifying Systems in Catalysis (UniSysCat) is an interdisciplinary research network funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as a part of the federal and state excellence strategy of Germany, Exzellenzstrategie. The funding period runs from January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2025. Around 300 researchers from the Berlin and Potsdam areas work at UniSysCat, focusing on current issues in catalysis research. UniSysCat is the follow-up project of the Cluster of Excellence Unifying Concepts in Catalysis (UniCat), which was funded from 2007 to 2018 as part of the federal and state excellence initiative of Germany Exzellenzstrategie.
