Volkswagen Foundation Supporting Two University of Freiburg Research Projects

Dr. Axel Bohmann, Photo: private / Universität Freiburg	Prof. Dr. Edoardo Milana, Photo: private / Universität Freiburg

The Volkswagen Foundation is supporting the two research projects at the University of Freiburg for three years each. Dr. Axel Bohmann’s project, “Idiolinguistics – Grounding Language Study in the Individual” is exploring individual linguistic variation and receiving 499 thousand euros in funding. For his project “Creating Neurofluidics for Intelligent Soft Machines,” Prof. Dr. Edoardo Milana has been given a grant of 549 thousand euros. He is trying to integrate neuro-inspired fluidic circuits into soft robots.

“Idiolinguistics – Grounding Language Study in the Individual”

Long shadows can also be cast in the sciences, such as the one belonging to Ferdinand de Saussure. His separation of langue and parole, the language system and the spoken utterance, is considered to be the basis of linguistics. “It’s a very dominant paradigm which prevailed in philology into the 1950s,” says Bohmann. But it is not just the influence of the history of science that has long placed the general above the specific. Only today is it possible to evaluate large data sets to adequately investigate individual linguistic variation.

The research topic of Bohmann’s project focuses on a group of around ten English-speaking subjects. During the three-year project, they will convey to the English Studies specialist, Bohmann, how they speak and write in different situations by recording conversations, emails, and tweets. At the same time, the subjects will document which books they are reading, which films they are watching, and which media they use. Bohmann speaks of a kind of “citizen science,” in consideration of the extensive language material and commitment of the research participants. Viewed over a longer time period, research could gain insight into how the language of the subjects changes during the course of their lives. “Being able to observe people over a longer time period is an absolute asset in lingustics,” says Bohmann.

But how can it be demonstrated that what’s been read or seen influences individual expressions in language? It’s suspected that the frequency with which certain structures are present may be the key. Multi-word sequences, above all, could supply clues. One aspect would be how often they actually occur, while the other would be how familiar they are as well as how quickly they are mentioned. But even as varied as the influences that affect our speech are, there are links and similarities. Bohmann says that then, the question is, “how identical is identical?”

Bohmann is an assistant professor of English Linguistics at the Department of English of the University of Freiburg. He has researched German rap, multi-lingualism among West African refugees, and corpus linguistics. Bohmann received his doctorate in the US in 2017. From 2020 to 2021, he carried out research while taking part in the project “Language as a Complex Adaptive System: Insights from Physical Modelling”, which was also financed by the Volkswagen Foundation.

“Creating Neurofluidics for Intelligent Soft Machines”

 “When I wrote the draft description of the project I was inspired by new research in electronics, in which engineers are developing neuromorphic chips, meaning a computational architecture influenced by the structure of neural networks,” says Milana. He goes on to say, “My question is, ‘Can we create a neuromorphic circuit which uses fluids in place of electrons?’ Theoretically, that’s possible. You combine fluids technology with non-linear mechanics of soft materials in order to integrate multi-stable structures in fluidic networks.” For a long time, it seemed inconceivable, that robots could function without electricity. But ultimately, observing animals, microorganisms, and plants has changed the approach. Milana explains, “Imagine a soft robot with fluidic actuators controlled by an integrated neurofluidic network that’s composed of the same material as the robot and can be made with just a single pass of a 3D printer. We could develop a type of control for soft robots which perhaps might match the performance of biological organisms.”

For the research project “Creating Neurofluids for Intelligent Soft Machines” Milana and his team are building up on previous work done at IMTEK, the Department of Microsystems Engineering, and the Cluster of Excellence “Living, Adaption, and Energy-autonomous Materials Systems,” at the University of Freiburg. Prof. Dr. Thomas Speck and Dr. Falk Tauber recently presented soft robots which could be produced using a 3D printer. They were very robust and could work without electronics. Milana views his project as a further step towards developing an intelligent soft robot capable of moving effortlessly in the most varied of surroundings.

Since 2023, Milana has been a Tenure-Track Professor for Soft Machines at the Department of Microsystems Engineering of the University of Freiburg. He studied mechanical engineering and nanotechnology at the Sapienza University of Rome. While working on his doctorate at KU Leuven, he was already researching fluid control of soft robots. In 2019, he was a guest scientist at the University of Milan, and between 2020 and 2022, he conducted research at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in Bonn. Milana was selected for the Rising Stars Academy of the University of Freiburg in 2022. He received the stipend of the Walter Benjamin Programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG) in 2023.

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