School meets Research

The XLAB - Göttingen Experimental Laboratory for Young People was founded in 2000 and has since inspired more than 200,000 teenagers, young adults and teachers with its “hands-on science” concept. As a central facility of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, our modern building is located on the North Campus within sight of the Faculties of Natural Sciences, the University Medical Center and the Leibniz and Max Planck Institutes. As an extracurricular place of learning, the XLAB offers a motivating environment for learning new things and getting a taste of university life - even during the lunch break, as the canteen is right next door.

Our “school meets research” approach means enabling teachers and interested pupils to work in a research-oriented way in well-equipped and authentic laboratories. We offer topics and experiments that cannot usually be carried out in this form at schools. We implement this concept in all subject areas so that our participants can use a modern mass spectrometer in chemistry, work safely with impressive laser equipment in physics or work with genetically modified organisms in a safety level S1 laboratory in biology.

This provides an insight into how modern science works, because it is not just about teaching specialist knowledge, but also about how scientists gain new insights, that manual skills play an important role even in the natural sciences and that experiments and contexts cannot really be understood without the corresponding basic knowledge. Thanks to this authenticity, our courses can increase interest in the STEM subjects of biology, chemistry, physics and computer science and thus also provide valuable study and career guidance.

Our motivated team of experienced lecturers and well-trained technical staff look forward to your visit or participation in one of our online courses.
 

The International Center for Advanced Studies of Energy Conversion (ICASEC) aims at a sustained and long term contribution to scientific problems related to the production, consumption and storage of energy in all its forms. Some of society’s most serious and urgent problems derive ultimately from issues of human production and consumption of energy. Hence, energy science and technology development today generally focus either on issues of improving energy production or improving the efficiency of energy use. The sense of social urgency has led to a rapidly growing emphasis on applied research and we risk neglecting long term innovation based on breakthroughs in fundamental understanding that may lead to truly revolutionary new energy technologies. Therefore, the ICASEC intends to support scientists conducting basic research, who are concerned with the fundamental problem of how energy is converted between its various forms.
Likewise, the ICASEC wants to advertise the importance of fundamental research in energy science to the public. Energy conversion science provides a remarkable opportunity for scientific outreach to young people, making ICASEC to a very valuable partner for developing and conducting courses about these important topics of our energy future.