As "the" University in the Helmholtz Association, KIT is in a unique position to implement interdisciplinary teaching modules in the relevant degree programs. This includes the RIRO program, which explicitly promotes activities for the integration of large research infrastructures into teaching. The aim here is to increase the attractiveness of an interdisciplinary field of research for students, to integrate HELMA's large research infrastructures more closely into teaching and to establish early contact between the scientists at these infrastructures and the next generation of young talent. New teaching concepts such as "Automation in the Biosciences", "Autonomous Systems for Self Driving Labs", "Software Development for Self-Driving Labs" "Introduction to AI/ML/Foundation Models in Biomedical Research" "Design and Construction of Autonomous Experimental Systems" are to be integrated into the courses offered by the participating degree programs in Medical Engineering, Chemical Biology, Biology, Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, thus providing students with additional opportunities to acquire skills.

Courses

RiRO
Teaching

Chemical-biological and biomedical research in particular will become much more interdisciplinary in the coming years and research teams made up of chemists, biologists, medical technicians and physicians, as well as computer scientists, electrical engineers and mechanical engineers, will have to combine their expertise in order to shape the health of the future. All disciplines must speak and understand the same language. Structured teaching units and new teaching concepts such as "Automation in the life sciences", "Autonomous systems for self-driving labs", "Software development for self-driving labs" "Introduction to AI/ML/foundation models in chemical-biological and biomedical research" "Design and construction of autonomous experimental systems" are necessary in all disciplines involved in order to teach students the simplest basics. At the same time, however, students are also required to carry out experiments on the SDLs and program small codes to provide the machines with a research hypothesis or question.  To start with, we are currently establishing a set of modules that will be integrated into the elective semester of the "Chemical Biology" Master's course as a first step, as this course already works at the interface between chemistry and biology but the training is not available in computer science and engineering.

More is coming soon!