Three Lectures a Year
Three free lectures with varying speakers and topics are held each year in the auditorium of the Education Campus of the Dieter Schwarz Foundation.
Bürger-Uni as a Hybrid Format
The Bürger-Uni has also been offered as an online format since 2019. The live streams can also be accessed after the event. Check out the past streams on YouTube.
Bürger-Uni Tackles the Latest Topics
The cooperation partners want to use this format so that knowledge and science are accessible to everyone. The selection of lectures is based on topics of current interest to our society and relevant to science. This means that the Education Campus is not only open to students, lecturers and employees, but also aims to inspire Heilbronn residents and anyone interested in scientific topics from the region of all age groups through the Bürger-Uni.
Register Now for the Next Bürger-Uni
It is always possible to register approx. 4 weeks prior to the event via the Heilbronner Stimme. The daily newspaper will provide a corresponding notice.
Alena Buyx, Professor of Ethics in Medicine and Health Technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), delivered a lecture as part of the “Bürger Uni” series titled "Horror or Savior? Medical Ethical Considerations on AI." She emphasized that the discussion around Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often hysterical and swings between extremes: "Some say AI is the best and will do everything for us... Others say it is the greatest threat to humanity." According to her, AI is "a genuine dual-use technology, like nuclear power. It enables fantastic things and has simultaneously destructive potential."
Buyx explained that AI cannot develop consciousness, surpass human intelligence, or act morally responsible: "They will remain machines. Our intelligence is much more than data processing." Additionally, the use of AI should enhance human development and not replace humans.
Using four areas of application—medicine, education, administration, and public discourse—Buyx highlighted both the opportunities and risks of AI. In medicine, AI can make significant progress in drug development or diagnosis: "It used to take years... Now it takes six hours." However, she warned against blind trust and emphasized the need for fair datasets.
In education, Buyx spoke about intelligent tutoring systems that can personalize learning for children and criticized invasive surveillance in Asian classrooms. In the field of administration, she sees much potential for AI applications that could support vital decision-making.
Buyx called for transparency and mandatory labeling of AI but rejected outright bans: "The technology itself is neither good nor bad." She stressed the importance of global minimum standards and human responsibility in using this technology ethically: "The final responsibility must lie with humans."
The next “Bürger Uni” is on 7 November. The evening's expert, Prof Ortwin Renn, will talk about "The psychology of risk: how people deal with uncertainty".
As a budding astronaut, Dr. Insa Thiele-Eich is about to fulfill her lifelong dream. The scientist reveals how she got this far at the Heilbronn Citizens' University.
The pale patch of light under the striking "Sky W" barely caught the eye. Little Insa was hardly impressed by the unspectacular phenomenon in the night sky. It was only when her father explained that the light from the Andromeda galaxy had been traveling to Earth for two million years that the then eight-year-old Insa Thiele-Eich was gripped. She imagined that at that very moment, a child in the distant galaxy was looking towards Earth: "We would see each other without ever being able to meet. That blew me away."
This is how Dr. Insa Thiele-Eich, meteorologist, climate researcher with a doctorate and budding astronaut, recalls the key moment when she was infected with space fever at the 23rd Bürger-Uni of the TUM Campus Heilbronn in cooperation with the Heilbronner Stimme and the Dieter Schwarz Foundation. For the daughter of space traveler Gerhard Thiele, this path would not be an easy one. Even today, women in space travel have to contend with considerable prejudice. What's more, Insa Thiele-Eich faced three almost impossible challenges: At 1.60 meters tall, she was five centimetres below the minimum height previously prescribed for space travelers. As a German, she was only allowed to apply to the European Space Agency (ESA,) but not to NASA. In addition, she was a vegetarian – strictly forbidden for astronauts at the time.
Tough as nails training
So Thiele-Eich studied meteorology and learned how the problems often solve themselves: The minimum body height was lowered to 1.53 meters, and the ban on vegetarian food was lifted. Now the third challenge remained: in 2008, she did not yet meet all of the ESA's application criteria, and the next selection round would not take place until 2021. Should Insa Thiele-Eich wait that long to fulfill her lifelong dream?
In fact, almost another decade passed before the scientist suddenly took a significant step towards her dream: the foundation "Die Astronautin" was established in 2017. Its goal: to take a German woman into space for the first time. She is to fly to the International Space Station on board a Space X capsule and carry out a 14-day research mission. Two women have survived the nerve-wracking selection process: Suzanna Randall, who also recently appeared as a guest speaker at the TUM Campus Heilbronn, and Insa Thiele-Eich. But that was just the beginning of the real work, because the three-stage preparatory training was a tough one. It included parabolic flights to experience the feeling of weightlessness, centrifuge training to simulate the increased gravity during a rocket launch, a moon analog simulation in which certain tasks had to be performed underwater in a spacesuit, and cave training in complete isolation at an ambient temperature of nine degrees.
Effects on the female body
There are still some hurdles to overcome: Funding for the mission is by no means secure. Insa Thiele-Eich complains about the lack of support from politicians. And even if the mission goes ahead, it is possible that Suzanna Randall will be selected as the first German woman in space instead of her. Thiele-Eich would take it sportingly: "Then I'll be the second one." She tries to compensate for the negative effect of her possible space flight on the climate by regularly drawing attention to climate change. Her mission would also be based on a plant-based diet. Her second passion, the promotion of women in space travel, will also be taken into account: the mission should research the effects of space travel on the female body.
But what remains of the eight-year-old girl who once discovered her fascination with space? Insatiable curiosity, says Insa Thiele-Eich. "I may never find out whether there are other children somewhere in our universe who are looking up at the night sky at the same time as me. But I know that there is something new to discover every day if you stay curious."
Of course, there are also new things to discover at the Bürger-Uni in Heilbronn, where Prof. Alena Buyx from the TUM School of Medicine and Health will speak on June 13, 2024 on the topic of "Medical ethics – ethical issues in hospitals, research and politics".
Lars Steinmetz, Professor of Genetics at Stanford University, on the podium of the Heilbronn Bürger-Uni
What would it be like if we could detect dangerous changes in our genetic make-up before we become ill? If we could cure them right at the cause, the genes? Or if we could immediately recognize when our blood values enter a critical range?
Much of this is already possible today, said Professor Lars Steinmetz at the Heilbronn Citizens' University at the Bildungscampus. At the event organized by the TUM Campus Heilbronn in cooperation with the Heilbronner Stimme and the Dieter Schwarz Foundation the Professor of Genetics at Stanford University presented three technologies that could prevent diseases.
Whole Genome Sequencing makes it possible to decode the human genome in order to identify risk variants in genes. Today it is used, for example, in the diagnosis of monogenetic diseases, in forensic analysis or in cancer medicine.
The second technology, known as Gene Scissors, makes it possible to cut out certain parts of the DNA and replace them with a healthy sequence. In this way, previously incurable diseases can be treated. Targeted therapy at the direct cause becomes possible and thus a permanent cure.
Biosensor Technology could intervene in advance. Sensors are implanted under the skin that measure certain blood values and send them to a smartphone. This allows dangerous deviations to be detected at an early stage. "In the future, we will certainly be wearing many sensors on, in and around our bodies," predicts Steinmetz.
Why is our society drifting apart? Ulrich Schnabel, business editor of the German newspaper Die Zeit, addressed this question at the last Bürger-Uni. In a well-filled auditorium on the Heilbronn educational campus, he showed how self-perception and the perception of others contribute to the division of society, because "egoists are always the others, never ourselves. Is solution hopeless? No, with the help of statistics, the expert appealed for the courage to be considerate and to be kind. Each individual influences a larger social circle than we suspect. Thus, one good deed can, directly and indirectly, motivate up to a million people to do the same. Ulrich Schnabel has hope for a return of the togetherness and every single visitor of this event now probably also. The next Citizens' Uni with the topic "Staying healthy: How Modern Technologies and Research Prevent Disease" will be held on November 9, 2023. The auditorium opens at 6 p.m., with the event beginning at 6:30 p.m. The speaker that evening will be genetics professor Lars Steinmetz from Stanford University School of Medicine.
Contact
