On Monday, 29 September, Verena Mertens (CDU), Member of the European Parliament, visited Paderborn University. She was welcomed by University President Prof. Dr. Matthias Bauer together with Simone Probst, Vice-President for Finances and Human Resources. In a joint exchange, they not only discussed the university's current achievements in research, teaching and transfer, but also its importance for the entire region.
"Our society is facing profound changes and is characterised by intense international competition and the rapid development of artificial intelligence. In order to prepare young people for the transformations of the future in the best possible way, we offer future-oriented degree programmes and good networking in Europe, for example via the COLOURS Alliance, Erasmus+ or numerous ERC grants," says Prof. Bauer. The Start-up Campus OWL also offers unique opportunities for students to successfully establish themselves as founders in the region.
Prof. Bauer also spoke about the "Neue Mobilit?t Paderborn" (NeMo) initiative, which has more than 70 members from business, science and local authorities, and the NeMo.bil project it initiated. This lighthouse project takes a holistic view of mobility and is developing a sustainable mobility ecosystem for the needs-based transport of people and goods.
This was followed by a joint visit to the Paderborn Centre for Parallel Computing(PC2). OTUS, Paderborn University's new supercomputer, was recently installed here. It ranks fifth in the so-called "Green 500", the list of the world's most efficient computer systems. Such enormous computing power is particularly necessary for highly complex simulations, for example in climate or materials research, explained Prof. Dr. Christian Plessl, computer scientist at the Paderborn Institute of Computer Science and head of PC2.
"It is impressive to see how dynamically the field of high-performance computing has developed at the university in recent years. I am personally very pleased that the course is being systematically set here for the future security of my home region. A scientific infrastructure has been created in Paderborn that is of a top European and international standard," Mertens summarised her impressions.
This text was translated automatically.
