Editorial Dear friends of »Matters of Activity«,

today's CZ# is filled with news and announcements. As we all still have to work from home most of the time and keep distance there will be more digital happenings, such as a new MoA Blog and virtual events.

And we would like to say thank you and goodbye to our Project Leader Petra Löffler who received a call to the Carl von Ossietzky Universität in Oldenburg.

Please also take a look at the call for proposals and the excellent job opportunity for the Junior Professorship for Digital Surgery and Interdisciplinary Technology Research at Charité Berlin. Let us know, if there are any news or insights that you would like to share with the Cluster and our community.

Kind regards
Antje Nestler, Eva Schmidt and Franziska Wegener

Filtering | Alumni We would like to thank Petra Löffler for her work as Project Leader of »Filtering« and send her good luck for her future as Professor for Theory and History of Contemporary Media at the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg. ↗ More

Together with Claudia Mareis and Florian Sprenger she will soon publish the open access book series »Future Ecologies« at Meson Press, which is expected to start in fall. Stay tuned for more information.

Object Space Agency Today we would like to make you aware of some new interesting material on our website. We would like to invite you to take a closer look into the project »Object Space Agency« and their brand new project website. We hope you enjoy learning more about the project. More projects will follow very soon. → more

Blog In the last weeks we have worked on a new digital Cluster tool, to exchange and publish our research in a blog format within the Cluster and to a broader public presenting insights of our more than 40 research areas and the interdisciplinary work. We are still in the testing phase and will inform you here, when the platform is ready to be launched.

Call Cluster member Maxime Le Calvé is co-organizing the exhibition »Field/Works. Kaleidoscopic Activities Between Anthropology and Art« togehter with the ANTART Network at EASE and they are now seeking contributions. The submission deadline is May 22nd. The event will take place virtually virtually July 21st to 24th, 2020. A second part will take place at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisboa, Portugal in 2021.

For anthropologists and artists ›doing fieldwork‹ in contemporary worlds, art can be much more than an object of investigation. Curation and creation through visual, audio, or performing arts are at the heart of their work, extending the established anthropological interest in writing as a medium of thought and knowledge sharing. This call addresses the theme of ›field/works‹, and encourages submissions from anthropologists and artists whose work breaks disciplinary boundaries, and whose practice foregrounds experimental, and open approaches. → more

Weaving | Achievements | Teaching | MoA Design Research Studio Three of the projects from »Scaling Nature 1: Wrinkles« were nominated for the »Raumprobe Materialpreis 2020« – ›the‹ award for special materials. In the project »Scaling Nature 1: Wrinkles« students of the bachelor's program in textile and surface design at weißensee school of art and design berlin investigated material activity in natural structures and developed new design strategies for active surfaces in a spatial context. Until June 16th there is an online voting for the most popular material, selected by the audience – vote for our projects now! → more

Call The Baden-Württemberg Stiftung and the Stifterverband are offering ↗ Junior, Senior and Tandem Fellowships for innovations in higher education. Lecturers of all disciplines at state and all state-recognized higher education institutions in Germany can apply. The funding aims to support the development and evaluation of new teaching formats, the redesign of modules and study units, particularly with regard to interdisciplinarity and diversity, and the consolidation of innovative teaching in higher education. The project funding is to start in 2021. Proposals and application documents are to be sent to the Stifterverband via their ↗ online application procedure by July 17th 2020.

Call Mit dem Henriette Herz-Preis zeichnet die Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung einmalig in 2020 Universitäten aus – achtmal bis zu 125.000€ Preisgeld. Gesucht werden überzeugende Konzepte für eine strategisch ausgerichtete Rekrutierung und Bindung von hoch qualifizierten inter­nationalen Nachwuchswissenschaftlerinnen und Nachwuchswissenschaftlern – passend zur jeweiligen Einrichtung. Anträge können bis zum 31. August 2020 eingereicht werden. ↗ more

Call Mit dem Ideenwettbewerb »Biologisierung der Technik« soll ein erster Schritt unternommen werden, das in Deutschland verfügbare Wissen im Hinblick auf die technische Machbarkeit und die Umsetzung in industriellen Nutzen in den beiden Schlüsseltechnologien »Neue Werkstoffe und Materialien« und »Produktionsforschung« (hier: Produktentstehung und Produktionsprozesse) zur Geltung zu bringen. Die so gewonnenen Erkenntnisse sollen Impulse für die weitere Ausgestaltung zukünftiger BMBF-Förderaktivitäten im Kontext der Biologisierung der Technik geben.

Im Rahmen der Ausschreibung werden Forschungs- und Entwicklungsarbeiten mit der Zielsetzung gefördert, die Anwendungs- und Verwertungschancen von biologisch inspirierten Materialien, Werkzeugen, Methoden oder Vorgehensweisen im Bereich der Materialwissenschaft und Werkstoffforschung oder der Produktionsforschung zu erhöhen.

Weitere Ausschreibungsdetails können ebenfalls ↗ hier eingesehen werden.

Call For the second half of the year there is an interesting funding initiative from the Volkswagen Foundation, regarding the field of »Artificial Intelligence and the Society of the Future«, Deadline October 15th, 2020.
Details of requirements and the application procedure can be found ↗ here.

In addition to the topic the Foundation recently published an ↗ explanatory film which provides insights into how the application procedure works.

Job Within the framework of the Cluster of Excellence, he/she will evaluate, support and promote the digital transformation in surgery and related disciplines. In cooperation with the research areas »Cutting« and »Material Form Function«, new surgical cutting techniques are to be investigated and developed, the repertoire of methods expanded and innovations initiated. It is planned to link the content of the project to institutions currently being established, such as »Der simulierte Mensch (Si-M)« and the »Berliner Simulations- und Trainingszentrum (BeST)«. Follow the link for the announcement in German. → more