In the late 19th century, Stuttgart was booming. The southern German city was famously the cradle of an emerging automobile sector and had already established itself as an industrial powerhouse and centre for toolmaking, mechanical engineering and textiles. Rail connections in the Baden-Württemberg region accelerated development, transported workers and spread wealth.
One might think, then, that an obvious place for the nascent railways to reached out to would have been the historic university town of Tübingen, about 20 miles from Stuttgart. No so, Tilman Wörtz of the university’s communications department informed me, on a recent visit. In fact, explained Wörtz, an accomplished journalist, the story goes that the academic grandees of the era resisted a connection with the emerging financial and industrial powerhouse, perhaps regarding it as somewhat uncouth and vulgar to distract from deep cultural and scientific considerations to engage with the forces of commerce. So for a long time, the proposed railroad hit the buffers.
Fortunately today, thanks to the efforts of university leaders, the institution strives to connect, both with industry and the wider community. There is now a railway station, and I was thrilled to speak with a number of academics about relaying their research and knowledge to non-academic readers. Indeed, this fascinating read on rapper Haftbefehl, who is the subject of a Netflix documentary gripping Germany has already come out of the sessions, and do stay tuned in the coming weeks and months for more from the University of Tübingen, which was founded in 1477 and is now the first German member institution of The Conversation.
Fast forward a week, and I found myself in the eye of what some cast as a fourth or even fifth industrial revolution, in Dubai, incorporating AI, nanobiology, and bioengineering. The city is pitching itself as being at the heart of, and a driving force in, this new era of change, which sees civic government enabling human and technological collaboration tackling societal issues and powering growth.
For more than a decade, what is now called Protoypes For Humanity has been an exhibition at the heart of this city’s dash for development, powering projects that bring the prospect of solutions to challenges in the environment, energy, health, technology and other spheres.
When I attended Prototypes a year ago, it was still largely a showcase for PhD candidates’ projects from some of the world’s leading universities, many of which are members of The Conversation. In the last 12 months, however, a new element has been developed, under the guidance of Naren Barfield, former Provost and Deputy Vice Chancellor of the UK’s Royal College of Art. This sees senior academics come to the city to deliver papers drawing on key aspects of their research.
Full transparency, I served on the selection panel Professor Barfield designed to finalise the programme and The Conversation was a media partner for the 2025 Prototypes event.
The themes for the year were as follows:
- Wellbeing and health futures
- Sustainable and resilient infrastructure
- Artificial intelligence and augmented intelligence
- Environmental sustainability and climate action
- Socio-economic empowerment and innovation
- Open and speculative categories
Following short paper presentations in the Socio-Economic Empowerment category, Barfield explained the thinking behind the new element of Prototypes and the opportunity for researchers:
We are bringing together some of the world’s sharpest minds and most innovative researchers to tackle challenges faced in different parts of the planet. Dubai and this initiative provide a unique chance to generate ideas across a range of academic disciplines that might not otherwise collaborate in such an impactful way.
The Prototypes for Humanity initiative and the relatively new Professors’ Programme has a proven track record of connecting academia with policymakers, industry, and the public in a way often described elsewhere as aspirational. Here, it is actually happening.
The reference to industry struck a chord, perhaps given that I’d so recently heard that story of detachment from 19th century Stuttgart, but also because it’s a grumble I regularly encounter across the world when it comes to academia and its engagement (or lack of) beyond the university sector today.
At the conference venue, in the Emirates Towers of Dubai International Financial District, Tadeu Baldani Caravieri, director of Prototypes for Humanity, discussed the thinking behind the project and potential routes forward.
At Protoypes we’ve seen how researchers can directly drive innovation in partnership with industry and, in the case of Dubai, with the city government as a facilitator.
This has been possible thanks to some of the advantages of this state and region. But these are solutions that can, and do present wider benefits – in some cases globally relevant solutions solutions.
He later added:
This edition [of Prototypes] helped to confirm fundamental assumptions for the space we operate in, i.e. creating bridges between academic ingenuity and real-world needs. The main one is that, although there is sometimes a disconnect between university innovation capabilities and industry needs, there is genuine interest, across all of the parts in this equation, to overcome obstacles and do more. We have enabled and witnessed very promising and results-oriented conversations between academia and potential partners, from PhDs and private sector discussing pilots in applied robotics, to professors supporting a humanitarian agency to rethink aid allocation systems, to multinationals looking to fuel their R&D roadmaps.
Dubai is an excellent incubator for these bridges we are building but, in keeping with the city’s outlook and spirit, we want to enable impact across the world – so it’s just natural that, in the future, we hope to open structured avenues for multi-city collaborations, where local ecosystems complement each other’s strengths.
Prototypes’ community brings in research talent from more than 800 universities around the world, including many academics who have also engaged with The Conversation. For instance, Jeremy Howick, of the University of Leicester, presented on empathy in healthcare in the age of AI, and has written this account. Further articles based on projects that exhibited and on the professors’ papers will be published on The Conversation and will be accessible via this link.
Stay tuned to read more on critical and diverse research relating to subjects such as monitoring and diagnosing pre-eclampsia (Patricia Maguire, University College Dublin, using seaweed to create a sustainable packaging alternative (Austeja Platukyte, Vilnius Academy of Arts ) and the emergent Internet of Beings (Francesco Grillo, Bocconi University, Milan).
