Research / 31.05.2025
Joint Berlin Data & AI Center planned

Data-driven research is crucial for tackling societal challenges. In a collaboration that is so far unique, Berlin's Universities of Excellence, the Max Delbrück Center, and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, together with the Zuse Institute Berlin, aim to establish a powerful Data and AI Center.

The Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin for Materials and Energy (HZB), the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association, Berlin's Universities of Excellence including Charité – Universitätsmedizin, and the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) recently signed a joint declaration of intent for this purpose. The goal is a flagship project of outstanding importance for the future of Berlin as a research hub. 

The partners aim to create a regionally anchored and internationally competitive infrastructure that enables high-performance, cross-institutional, data-driven cutting-edge research. It will effectively complement the national high-performance infrastructure at the ZIB. The partners agree that complex scientific simulations and the use of artificial intelligence in particular require new, high-performance data infrastructures. Joint planning and use of resources represents a particularly sustainable approach. 

A high-performance data center

As a first step, a new high-performance research Data Center is to be built at the HZB site in Berlin-Adlershof in cooperation with the ZIB. The HZB and ZIB have been engaged in intensive planning for the past year and aim to implement the first phase of the data center as quickly as possible. In the long term, computing capacity is to be expanded to up to 5 megawatts through new construction. 

In the next phase, the partners will jointly explore potential funding models, administrative structures, and usage scenarios. These will be incorporated into a detailed cooperation agreement to ensure long-term, cross-institutional access to and operation of the Data Center. 

Karsten Häcker, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the Max Delbrück Center, emphasizes that the Berlin science network BRAIN is a crucial component for the technical implementation. After all, the fiber optic network financed by the Berlin Senate connects all the locations of scientific institutions in Berlin. “We are very much looking forward to working together,” he says. “In this project, we are collaborating even more closely with the ZUSE Institute and, for the first time, with the data center infrastructures of the other institutions.” 

Further information

Data Science and AI at the Max Delbrück Center