Photo: Helmholtz Zentrum MünchenThe rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are opening up new possibilities in medicine. As part of a pop-up exhibition on stem cells and cell identity, experts from diverse disciplines are coming together in public dialogue They will explore the opportunities, limitations, and ethical implications of AI in biomedicine.
Key topics include:
What is AI and what opportunities and limitations does it offer in biomedicine?
What role is AI playing in biomedical research, particularly in the extraction of pluripotent stem cells?
What ethical implications are associated with these new developments, and how are they being addressed within scientific and public discussions?
The event will take place in the Forum of the Future on Museum Island - access directly from the Ludwigsbrücke. The participation ticket includes a free drink.
On the podium
- Prof. Dr. Jan Korbel
Jan Korbel is the interim head of the EMBL Heidelberg. Before starting his own research at EMBL, he conducted postdoctoral work at Yale University. His scientific interest focusses on the mechanisms driving accelerated genome evolution, particularly in cancer. Jan Korbel played a key role in the 1000 Genome Project and served on the steering committees of leading international cancer research initiatives. Beyond his scientific work, he is actively engaged in shaping bioethical frameworks for genomic medicine, aiming to ensure responsible patient genome sequencing and ethically sound data sharing. Jan Korbel received numerous scientific awards, including the European Pezcoller Foundation Award in Cancer Research, is elected member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). - Theresa Willem (TU München, Institute for History and Ethics in Medicine)
Dr. Theresa Willem studied Media Science (M.A.), specializing in cybernetics and the theoretical foundations of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. Following her studies, she gained hands-on experience in digital health and innovation, working primarily as a product manager at a digital health incubator in Berlin. Since 2021, she has returned to academia, contributing to several research projects at the Technical University of Munich’s Institute for History and Ethics in Medicine. Her work there has explored the ethical dimensions of AI in healthcare, including patient recruitment via AI-based social media platforms, AI-driven medical diagnostics, and swarm learning. In early 2023, she also began working as an AI ethics consultant at Helmholtz Munich. She recently completed her PhD at the Technical University Munich, graduating summa cum laude. Her doctoral research focused on embedded ethics in diagnostic imaging AI, integrating perspectives from biomedical ethics, AI ethics, critical data studies, and science and technology studies. Theresa Willem is a member of the Bavarian Elite Academy and the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. - Carsten Marr (Helmholtz Munich, Institute AI for Health)
Carsten Marr is the founding director of the Institute of AI for Health at Helmholtz Munich, a European center for applied artificial intelligence. His scientific goal is to develop AI-based methods to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and understanding of diseases. After studying theoretical physics at TU Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Carsten transitioned from physics to theoretical biology. His PhD thesis at TU Darmstadt focused on the architecture of biological networks and was recognized as the best of its year in the Department of Biology. Following postdoctoral research stays in Munich, Bremen, and Edinburgh, he started his own research group at Helmholtz Munich in 2013 and later became deputy head of the Institute of Computational Biology. In interdisciplinary projects with experimentalists, biomedical experts, and clinicians, he pioneered the use of deep neural networks on life science data to predict stem cell decisions from microscopic images and to identify leukaemia from blood and bone marrow smears. He has received several awards for his research on single-cell data analysis, including a prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant. Since July 2025, he has been Professor of AI in Haematology and Cell Therapy at the Department of Medicine III, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. - Christina Berndt (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Christina Berndt is one of Germany's leading science journalists. She is a senior member of a member of the editorial team at Süddeutsche Zeitung since March 2000. She works as an author, journalist and speaker on topics in psychology, medicine and life sciences. She became known to a wider public through her appearances on TV talk shows, especially during the Corona pandemic. She has received numerous awards for her work. Among other things, she received the Wächterpreis der Tagespresse (a German journalism award) for her revelations of transplant scandals, the honorary award of the German Society for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy for consistently good reporting on mental health. Christina Berndt was voted ‘Science Journalist of the Year’ several times, most recently in 2021, coming in first. - Julia Serong (Munich Science Communication Lab und LMU), Moderatorin
Julia Serong is Research Director of the Munich Science Communication Lab (MSCL) and research associate at the Department of Media and Communication at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München/LMU Munich. Until 2021, she coordinated the ad-hoc working group “Facticity of the World” at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. She is an expert in science communication with a special focus on planetary health. The interdisciplinary and diverse perspectives at the MSCL provide many opportunities to broaden the knowledge of science communication and to develop new communication formats and strategies together with practitioners.