Dirk Hommrich

Dirk is interested in tech drivers with regard to the consolidation of norms and visions, policies and roadmaps, investments and construction activities for both data infrastructures/data spaces and e-infrastructures, especially with regard to initiatives towards Open Science (e.g. UNESCO Recommendation, EOSC, GOSC). Dirk studied philosophy, political science, sociology and history (of technology) at the University of Karlsruhe and the University of Frankfurt/Main. He did his interdisciplinary PhD at the Technical University of Darmstadt, where he also was a fellow at the Postgraduate School Topology of Technology, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 2006 to 2012. Moreover, in 2009 Dirk has been a visiting researcher at Science and Technology Program, University of California Davis, USA. Since then he cultivated his interdisciplinary research background as well as his involvement with the philosophy and ethical reflection of technology, innovation, and enhancement at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Helmut-Schmidt-University / University of Federal Armed Forces Hamburg, the University of Mainz, the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, and as a Senior Researcher of the Institute of Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). At ITAS worked in the research field "knowledge society and knowledge policy", and moreover has been of in charge coordinating a specialized scholarly online portal for technology assessment which he developed together with colleagues of ITAS and FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure. Dirk is spokesperson of the directorate of the Institute for the Study of Culture Heidelberg since 2019. As a science policy advisor of the German Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures (RfII), during its 2nd mandate (starting 2019) by the German Joint Science Conference, Dirk has been in charge of the RfII's latest policy report "Datenpolitik, Open Science und Dateninfrastrukturen: Aktuelle Entwicklungen im europäischen Raum" which was published in October 2022. In 2023, Dirk made a stopover at the Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institute – Federal Research Institute for Rural Areas, Forests and Fisheries where he was engaged withhin the inter-institutional project "AI and Data Accelerator" (KIDA) of the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL). Since 2024 Dirk returned to doing research at ITAS within the group “Life, Innovation, Health, and Technology”. In addition Dirk is member of CODATA's international, higl level expert working group on dataethics (2022-2023), since 2024 of its subsequent task group (DETG).