University of Osnabrück - Institute of Cognitive Science

Osnabrück University, founded in 1974, is a young, vibrant university in northwest Germany that is renowned for its research and teaching in the areas of Humanities, Social Sciences, Science, Law and Business Administration/Economics. The University provides ideal conditions for over 11,000 students and PhD students to learn and conduct research. One key feature of Osnabrück University is the extent to which it combines different scientific disciplines in research and teaching. Thinking beyond the borders of individual fields of expertise is fostered in the interdisciplinary institutes of Migration Research, Cognitive Science, Early Modern Intercultural Studies and Environmental Systems Research.

The interdepartmental, interdisciplinary Institute of Cognitive Science (IKW) was established in June 2001 and officially opened in November 2002. The Institute originated from the Institute of Semantic Information Processing, which was founded in 1993. Research conducted at IKW focuses primarily on questions of higher cognitive functions – on the one hand, as pure research on an interdisciplinary level with an interest in more comprehensive scientific knowledge, that is to say overlapping traditional disciplines, and on the other, with the aim of preparing technologies with which the challenges of a modern information society can be met in a competent and innovative manner.