Berlin Science Week 2025
Discover How AI Transforms Science and Society
Ten days of celebrating a decade of Berlin Science Week. Once again Berlins science festival, with hundreds of free events, will transform city into a playground of scientific ideas. BIFOLD will join the festival with several contributions ranging from AI-powered demonstrations in medicine, neuroscience, data management, and Earth observation, to a hands-on workshop on large language models (LLMs) and exhibitions exploring current AI topics in society and nature.
From AI Research to Everyday Life
In artificial intelligence, research results often make their way from the lab into everyday life within just a few weeks. Researchers from BIFOLD are showcasing some of the most recent examples of this rapid progress.
AI is dramatically accelerating the pace of science. Findings that once took years to reach application can now do so in a matter of weeks. The Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD) conducts pioneering research in the fundamentals of artificial intelligence. The institute’s scientists develop algorithms that assist pathologists in analyzing tissue samples, data processing systems that simplify workflows in intensive care units, and generative AI models that can search vast satellite image databases using simple text queries. They also design benchmarking systems that help assess the quality of the data and algorithms being used.
Curious to see how this works in practice? Visit the BIFOLD booth on the Berlin Science Week Campus to experience these systems in action and discuss with the researchers the next major breakthroughs AI might bring.
Date: Nov 01 - 02, 2025
Title: Aus der KI-Forschung in den Alltag
Venue: Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
Time: 09:30 - 18:00
Language: German & English
Rhyme, Rhythm, and Risk: What Defines Language Models
Large Language Models (LLMs) are AI systems designed to process, understand, and generate human language. They power many of today’s automated systems — from drafting emails and summarizing texts to answering questions and even composing poetry. Unlike humans, LLMs do not “understand” facts or rules. Instead, they recognize recurring patterns in word sequences, having been trained on billions of words from books, articles, code, and social media.
This workshop will explain how LLMs are built through pretraining, fine-tuning, and alignment, and will shed light on their strengths, limitations, and risks. Participants will also discuss ethical and legal questions — from overreliance and bias to safety concerns — and explore why maintaining a healthy dose of skepticism toward AI is essential.
No prior technical knowledge or background in artificial intelligence is required.
Date: Nov 02, 2025
Title: Reim, Rhythmus und Risiko: Was Sprachmodelle ausmacht
Venue: Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
Time: 14:00 - 15:30
Language: German
The Red Queen Effect
At its core lies a paradox: while AI promises groundbreaking advances in healthcare, it simultaneously raises the stakes for those striving to keep pace with its rapid developments. The Red Queen Effect examines the social and ethical questions that arise from the increasing use of AI in medical contexts. Faster diagnoses and more precise treatments — supposedly leading to healthier and longer lives — shape both individual and collective expectations, fears, and imaginations. Yet AI systems are deeply embedded within existing social, political, and economic structures. The exhibition reveals that they are never neutral tools: the visions and promises surrounding AI are shaped by those who design, monitor, and project it as a cure-all for the future.
The Red Queen Effect consists of two main parts. The first is a four-channel video installation that immerses viewers in the fictional health-tech startup ALICE. The company offers AI-driven medical services and products, initially to a group of volunteers. The film reflects on the contradictions and expectations triggered by the promises of AI-based healthcare.
The second part, Lung Portraits, is a series of twelve light boxes. Each piece begins as a watercolor on glass treated with chemicals, forming the basis for an aesthetic experiment with an AI model specialized in detecting lung cancer in tissue scans. The artist duo developed these works as part of the Art of Entanglement fellowship, awarded in 2024 by the Schering Stiftung and the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD).
The Lung Portraits mimic microscopic tissue specimens. In collaboration with BIFOLD researchers, the watercolor scans were fed into an AI diagnostic system, which interpreted the artworks as genuine medical images — identifying, for instance, an “origin of micropapillary breast carcinoma” in one of them. The resulting “diagnoses” were laser-engraved onto the watercolors. This experiment illustrates how many AI systems tend to produce seemingly plausible results rather than acknowledge uncertainty. The artists thereby question the reliability of such systems when confronted with incomplete or ambiguous data.
In the video installation created for the exhibition, ALICE is introduced through the experiences of 22 volunteers participating in clinical trials for the company’s health-enhancement products and procedures. The volunteers — ranging from health enthusiasts and transhumanists to skeptical activists — embody the full emotional spectrum surrounding AI-driven healthcare: fear, excitement, skepticism, hope, and dependency. Their perspectives emerge in a series of interviews with the company, in which their faces are transformed into animated watercolor portraits.
¹ The exhibition’s title refers to the Red Queen from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. In the story, the Red Queen tells Alice that one must run as fast as possible just to stay in the same place. In evolutionary biology, the so-called “Red Queen Effect” describes a hypothesis proposed in 1973: that species must continuously adapt and evolve simply to survive in a changing environment.
Exhibition dates: September 11 – December 12, 2025, Schering Stiftung
Date: Nov 01 - 10, 2025 (Berlin Science Week)
Title: The Red Queen Effect
Venue: Schering Stiftung
Time: 14:00 - 20:00
Exhibition: Beyond Us / Coral Sonic Resilience
Sculpting Sound to Support the Reefs
Marco Barotti was the first artist in residence of the "Art of Entanglement" program set up by BIFOLD together with the Science Gallery Initiative of the TU Berlin in 2022/23. In 2025, Barotti was awarded the Art & Science Breakthrough of the Year by Falling Walls and received an Honorary Mention from the S+T+ARTS Prize.
For its 10th anniversary, Berlin Science Week presents Beyond Us, its debut exhibition showcasing the works of the Falling Walls Art & Science Science Breakthrough of the Year 2025, Marco Barotti. The exhibition brings together a selection of Barotti’s works that examine the precarious situation of coral reefs and the urgent need to establish a harmonious relationship with the underwater world, including his award-winning project, Coral Sonic Resilience.
Barotti’s works draw on artistic practices informed by scientific research as a method for ecological regeneration. At the intersection of art and science, he explores how what is broken can be reconfigured, and how scars can give rise to new forms of expression and survival. In doing so, Beyond Us reveals what usually remains unseen: the bonds and tensions within our entanglements with nature, technology, and society.
CORAL SONIC RESILIENCE
Coral Sonic Resilience is an interdisciplinary art and science project rooted in acoustic ecology. Using underwater sound sculptures made of ceramic and calcium carbonate, it investigates how the soundscapes of healthy coral reefs can support the recovery of damaged ones. The sculptures are installed underwater, creating acoustic habitats that invite marine life to repopulate degraded ecosystems. The project combines artistic experimentation with scientific research, making the hidden soundscapes of the reef audible and tangible. It invites audiences to discover and explore the sonic dimension of coral reefs, engaging with the rhythms and textures of these ecosystems and reflecting on the intersection of sound, art, and ecological restoration.
Exhibition
Date: Nov 06 - 09, 2025
Title: Coral Sonic Resilience
Venue: Holzmarkt 25
Time: Thu: 14:00–20:00; Fri–Sat: 12:00–21:00; Sun: 12:00–20:00
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Artist Talk
Date: Nov 09, 2025
Title: Coral Sonic Resilience
Venue: Holzmarkt 25
Time: 17:30 - 18:15