Thomas Wortmann & Marco Tamborini – Guest Lecture

Thomas Wortmann will give a lecture titled “Naturally informatic – What we can (not) learn from nature” and Marco Tamborini will lecture on “Dissolution of boundaries – biology, technology and design”. Afterwards, we will have an open discussion.

Tenure-track Professor Thomas Wortmann heads the Department of Computing in Architecture at the Institute for Computer-Based Design and Construction (ICD/CA) at the University of Stuttgart. For this purpose, he is a faculty member of the International Max Planck Research School for Intelligent Systems (IMPRS-IS). After studying architecture at the University of Kassel and design and computation at MIT, he received his PhD from the Singapore University of Technology and Design. Before taking up his position at ICD, he taught at the National University of Singapore and held a position at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China. He researches and teaches the application of artificial intelligence (AI) methods-such as AI reasoning, AI planning, machine learning, optimization, and multivariate visualization-in architectural design and construction processes and leads the development of Opossum, a machine learning-based optimization tool that has been downloaded over 10,000 times.

Marco Tamborini teaches philosophy and history of science at the Technical University of Darmstadt, where he is a private lecturer. He is a member of the Junge Akademie | Mainz -- Academy of Sciences and Literature | Mainz and a Fellow of the Johanna Quandt Young Academy. His research focuses on the history and philosophy of biology, bioinspired and engineering disciplines (e.g., bionics, biorobotics, synthetic biology, embodied AI, biofabrication, biomaterials, bioinspired architecture), and the philosophy of technology and technoscience from the 19th century to the present.