With this highly innovative project in biomaterials research, in which TU Darmstadt is involved with its Centre for Synthetic Biology, the partners are applying in the current phase of the Excellence Strategy and have already been successful: “CoM2Life” was one of 41 out of 143 draft proposals submitted throughout Germany to receive a positive evaluation. The decision on which Clusters of Excellence will then be funded from 2026 will be made on May 22, 2025.

TU Darmstadt and JGU Mainz, together with Goethe University Frankfurt, form the strategic alliance of Rhine-Main universities. With around 98,000 students and over 1,500 professorships, they cooperate closely in research, studies and teaching. As renowned research universities, they are shaping Frankfurt-Rhine-Main as an integrated and globally visible science region.

Their joint project “CoM2Life” aims to develop a fundamentally new generation of soft biomaterials that are able to enter into permanent and reciprocal communication with biological systems such as cells and tissues by integrating the principles of living systems. The researchers follow an approach that combines the chemistry-centered design of biomaterials with the design of regulatory circuits in synthetic biology. This enables the development of intelligent biomaterials that are capable of selectively detecting signals from their environment, processing them internally and then controlling actuators and effectors as required.

TU Darmstadt is represented in the Excellence Strategy competition with a total of three project outlines. In addition to “CoM2Life” on communicating biomaterials, these are “Reasonable Artificial Intelligence” (RAI) on artificial intelligence and “The Adaptive Mind” (TAM) from the field of cognitive sciences.

JGU/bjb