Our vision is to enable materials to think. To achieve this, we want to create an infrastructure that enables us to develop such materials in the lab and make them technically usable. An example of our vision would be a high-strength material that can be manufactured like corals using distributed, biomimetic, miniaturised, and additive processes, and that functions like bone, adapting to external influences, constantly monitoring itself, and continuously renewing itself.

Currently, there are no technical materials that exhibit intelligence or that can independently adapt, monitor, and renew themselves as well as generally serve as independent, active functional components in structures and components while also being circular, meaning they produce no waste and unwanted by-products. Biological tissues and systems, such as bones and corals, however, impressively show that this can be realised.

The infrastructure supported here is intended to help make such materials technically usable. Our research is motivated by the megatrends of climate change & green transition, aging societies, and digitalisation, along with the challenges that accompany them. Sustainable, cognitive materials are a key technology to address the challenges arising from these transformations, allowing the infrastructure to seamlessly integrate into TU Clausthal with its focus on the digitally informed circular economy.

To move towards this vision, we are building an infrastructure at the Institute of Materials Science and Engineering that allows us to develop such materials in the laboratory and translate them into technical applications. This infrastructure will connect digital materials science with advanced manufacturing technologies, enabling new approaches in areas such as materionomics, materials edge computing, and cognitive materials. In doing so, it creates capabilities that are currently not yet addressed by partners within or outside TU Clausthal.

At the same time, this environment will strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration with research groups both within the university and internationally, and it will open new opportunities for joint research projects and external funding, including within European research programmes.

With this infrastructure, we aim to pursue several scientific directions:

• Intelligent, adaptive materials that can monitor themselves and initiate self-healing processes, where the material itself becomes an active functional element—for example through the integration of biomimetic sensing and adaptronic functionality directly at the material level.
• Architectured materials that combine the outstanding mechanical properties and multifunctionality of living materials and can be produced through new biomimetic and adaptive manufacturing approaches.
• A form of “material self-awareness” that goes beyond digital twins, enabling intelligent materials and structures for applications such as implants or biomimetic products and designs.
• New concepts of materials edge computing, in which the material itself becomes the computational edge, allowing processing capabilities to be embedded directly within materials or structures and enabling local, autonomous decision-making.
• Cognitive materials, capable of performing inference tasks and responding to external stimuli based on internal decision processes—for example in self-healing, adaptive materials for aerospace or biomedical engineering applications.
• The translation of these concepts into practical technologies.