While the Competence Portfolio is the basis of KIT research [http://www.forschung.kit.edu/], Human life today is largely determined by science and technology on the individual level as well as on the level of society. Life and profession, wealth, health, safety, chains of values added, communication, leisure, sports, and arts are pervaded with influences of science and technology. They modify social traditions, long existing cultural habits, collective and individual identities, and put traditional moral standards in question.
Vice versa, science and technology have to adapt or react to new ways of life and work, changing attitudes and values, i.e. to modifications of individual and collective life and living and change processes of the society as a whole. Moreover, the society has numerous expectations as to how science and technology are to solve the big problems of the presence. Demographic change, the challenge of sustainable development, securing the competitiveness of industry in view of globalization, and protection of human health are only some examples. They probably will not be managed without scientific-technical innovations.
