MobiLab
The "MobiLab" was created in 2021 as a mobile participation lab in the form of a tiny house through a cooperation of the research group "Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change" at ITAS and the KIT-Center Humans and Technology. It represents a platform for the exchange of science and society and can be used for various forms of participatory research, citizen science, science communication as well as for participation and dialogue with society. The MobiLab is a novelty. Both the concept and the realization as a multifunctional tiny house produced in a sustainable way are unique.
Thanks to flexible equipment, state-of-the-art IT and optional furnishing of the surrounding outdoor space, experiments and many other formats of transdisciplinary and transformative research as well as bidirectional knowledge transfer can be conducted 'on site' with the MobiLab. Modern IT also helps to adequately illustrate the often technical and complex topics - such as autonomous driving, geothermal energy or climate change - e.g. via simulations.
In 2025, our mobile participation lab, or MobiLab for short, traveled through the Upper Rhine region with the Eucor network for the second time. The goal of this year's roadshow was to make research on sustainability visible to everyone.
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Rediscover the city! KIT Science Week marked the beginning of a collaboration between MuT and the Natural History Museum. The biodiversity in Karlsruhe is highlighted by citizens photographing wild animals, plants and fungi.
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Under the motto "The future is operating here," the Department of Biomedical Engineering used 3D printing, lasers, and other hands-on research to show what the medicine of the future could look like from July 9 to 11. This stop is part of the Eucor MobiLab Roadshow.
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The MobiLab is based on the experience of the "Quartier Zukunft - Labor Stadt" (QZ) real laboratory, which has been implementing and researching contributions to sustainable urban development and a culture of sustainability in Karlsruhe since 2012. It became clear early on that research in and with society cannot succeed within the university, in the 'ivory tower'. The dialogue between scientists and social actors at eye level as a criterion for the success of good transdisciplinary and transformative research requires a presence in the midst of society. MobiLab thus combines and extends the functionality of the "Future Space" (from 2015) as a local, highly visible address, work and meeting space of the Reallabor and the Quartier-Zukunft-Mobil (from 2013), a heavy-duty bicycle that enabled mobile presence and interaction in urban space.
The MobiLab was realized under the leadership of the Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change (KAT) at ITAS and MuT in cooperation with a number of other partner institutions. MuT and KAT jointly coordinate its use. The construction was financed by funds from the KIT Excellence Initiative "Living the Change".
Thanks to flexible equipment, state-of-the-art IT and optional furnishing of the surrounding outdoor space, experiments and many other formats of transdisciplinary and transformative research as well as bidirectional knowledge transfer can be conducted 'on site' with the MobiLab. Modern IT also helps to adequately illustrate the often technical and complex topics - such as autonomous driving, deep geothermal energy, climate change, etc. - e.g. via simulations.
As a transdisciplinary infrastructure, MobiLab is an investment in the future for the entire real-laboratory research at KIT in the long term and will be available to all KIT research and development projects with real-laboratory relevance in the future. In particular, it will support - as a common, connecting research tool - the real labs and real-world lab professorships at KIT.
MobiLab can be used by all KIT research institutions that want to conduct sustainability-oriented real-lab research or transdisciplinary research. For further information and if you are interested in using it, please contact: mobilab-kokreis∂lists.kit.edu.
