The Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS) is a newly established joint Polish–German research center situated in Görlitz, Germany. At CASUS, we believe that future research is interdisciplinary and data-driven. We have set up a new kind of research center that is open to researchers across the world. As a young and thriving institution, we position ourselves as a strong partner in the digitalization of science and draw new scientific connections to address future challenges with the help of digital scientific solutions.

We combine methods from mathematics, systems theory, data science, and scientific computing at a single location, with the aim to rethink data-intensive systems research. Our strong partners provide us with access to high-quality research data produced by some of the most sophisticated research infrastructures available, from particle physics to the life sciences, from environmental data to data from autonomous vehicles. With this data, we develop digital solutions that are used across disciplines, and we form cross-disciplinary research teams to answer pressing questions, from the consequences of global change on biodiversity to the treatment of cancer, from understanding the formation of organisms and life to our view of the universe we live in.

• We meet current and future challenges with interdisciplinary research.
• The concept of open science is central to our mission, our methods, and our self-perception.
• We are fully committed to the development of open source software that can be used across research disciplines, building on our key competences in high-performance computing, large-scale artificial intelligence, and human-machine interaction.
• We strongly advocate open and F.A.I.R. data as a prerequisite to interdisciplinary and inclusive research.
• We develop open data and metadata standards and take part in international standardization efforts.
• We provide access to research data, to our knowledge base, and to educational material.
• We disseminate our knowledge through agile and freely accessible formats. Using different instruments, programs, and tools, we enhance the exchange and transfer of our knowledge and technologies to science, industry, and society.