Klaus Tschira Foundation

Forscherstation is the name of the Klaus Tschira Competence Centre for Early Science Education. It seeks to instill kindergarten children and their educators with enthusiasm for the natural sciences. Children are encouraged to playfully explore natural phenomena from their immediate environment. The explorer station is a research facility of the college of education Heidelberg. It also investigates the effects of further training on the teacher’s development of competence and the children’s learning processes.

The GIS-Station is the Klaus Tschira Competence Centre for digital geographical media. It offers learning opportunities in the fields of remote sensing, geographical information systems and GPS. With this, the station seeks to support teachers' and students' skills in using digital geographical media. This is based on the assumption that digital geographical media will help students to better explore the Earth and facets of global change. The project is attended by the college of education Heidelberg.

Every year since 2006, the Klaus Tschira Foundation has been hosting science adventure days in Luisenpark, Mannheim. Children, students, teachers and parents are able to go on natural scientific expeditions with competitions for students, oral presentations, as well as experiments and hands-on exhibitions. Since 2018, the event also takes place in the city of Bremen and from 2021 on at Mainau Island. A different scientific theme is chosen for Explore Science each year.

Since 2012 the Haus der Astronomie near Heidelberg is a center for education of astronomy in schools, offers workshops for teachers of astronomy, operates a planetarium and works as a center for outreach to the general public. Building and operation is funded by the Foundation.

In January 2010, the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) opened its doors as the successor of the European Media Laboratories (EML) Research, which was founded in 2003. As a sister institute of the application-oriented EML, it has the agenda to engage in long-term oriented, fundamental scientific research, irrespective of popular trends. The investigators come from the following fields: life sciences, scientific databases and computational linguistics, theoretical astrophysics, statistic methods and computational sciences. The institute pursues an interdisciplinary and cooperative approach.

The Klaus Tschira Laboratory for physical age determination is an institution of the Reiss Engelhorn Museum Mannheim and a related institute of the University of Tübingen. Humanistic considerations regarding the dating of artwork are examined with the aid of natural scientific methods such as radiocarbon dating. It is part of the Curt-Engelhorn-Centre of Archaeometry gGmbH, which is an research institute that operates nationally and internationally and, at the same time, a service provider in the field of archaeometry.

Since 2006, the Klaus Tschira Stiftung has been looking for young scientists who write a generally understandable article in German about their research and the content of their PhD thesis. The prize is awarded in each of the categories biology, chemistry, information technology, mathematics, neurosciences and physics as well as in closely related fields. Participation is open to young scientists graduating within the previous two years with an excellent final grade. Contributions are judged for scientific quality and public understanding by a panel of experts on science and communication, respectively. With this competition, the Klaus Tschira Stiftung pursues the goal of advancing public awareness for the natural sciences, mathematics and information technology. The ability to communicate is fundamental to making innovative research findings accessible to an interested but rather non-scientific audience. Yearly, up to eight winners receive the award endowed with prize money of €7,500 each. Furthermore, the prize-winning contributions are released in the KlarText-Magazine. All competitors are offered a participation in a two-day workshop for science communication. The Klaus Tschira Prize was first awarded from 1996 to 1999, but at the time was restricted to graduates from the University of Karlsruhe. The competition was revived in 2005 and since 2006 has been open to participants nationwide.

The vision of the National Institute for Science Communication (NaWik) is to improve the information flow from academic research to the public with the goal of a more scientifically literate society. For that purpose, the NaWik trains scientists to communicate their intentions, findings and issues to a wider audience and engage with society for a dialogue. It offers a wide range of seminars and workshops for the academic community. The NaWik is an institute of the Klaus Tschira Stiftung and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.