Image Credit: Bavaria Luftbild

The organizing institution of the conference is the DFG collaborative research centre CRC 1114: Scaling Cascades in Complex Systems. Its headquarters are part of the Free University of Berlin, located in Dahlem in Berlin’s south-west. Dahlem is one of the most affluent parts of the city. Here one will find numerous consulates, museums (among others: Museen Dahlem), and opulent town houses. The private residence of the German president is also located in Dahlem, as well as the Berlin Botanical Garden. In Dahlem's west lies the Grunewald forest, including the Renaissance Grunewald hunting lodge built in 1543. Several further recreational areas in the west of Berlin, such as Schlachtensee and Wannsee (two famous lakes of Berlin) and the city of Potsdam, can all be easily reached by public transport from Dahlem campus.

In addition to the Free University of Berlin, Dahlem hosts many other institutions of higher education and research. On weekdays the area is busy with students who arrive on the U-Bahn, the S-Bahn or with buses (most students commute to Free University of Berlin from other, less expensive areas of Berlin).

The Free University of Berlin was founded on December 4, 1948, by students, scholars, and scientists with the support of the American allied forces and politicians in Berlin. The move was sparked by the persecution faced by students who took a critical eye of the system at the former University Unter den Linden, at that time located in the Soviet sector of the divided city. Students and academics wanted to be free to pursue their learning, teaching, and research activities at the Free University of Berlin without being subject to external political influence.

Short movie on the history of Free University of Berlin.

The conference's venue will be the Institute of Computer Science of the Free University of Berlin as well as the Zuse Institute Berlin.