Closing the Loop: How Science Stays in Touch with Society

In this panel discussion, we present the Berlin University Alliance's approach to responsible innovation as an ongoing attempt to close the loop between research and society. We explore what this means on multiple levels: how research itself is performed — the methods, values, and practices through which scientists work — and what institutional structures and practices need to be established for science to stay in touch with society throughout. Drawing on concrete examples from technologies of nutrition, mobility, and health, we explore how societal impulses and inputs shape not just the questions science asks, but the very way science is conducted and governed — and how science can return what it owes: not just as products, but as shared understanding, as changed practices, as democratic inquiry. Because science that closes the loop is science that touches lives — and is touched by them in return.