No. 111/2020

5 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 111/2020 Photos: Humboldt Foundation/Nikolaus Brade, Silvia Steinbach, Illustration: Martin Rümmele/Raufeld Medien 24 SCHWERPUNKT ONLINE Interactive version www.humboldt-foundation.de/ kosmos 12 With a centre page AI poster 24 CLOSE UP ON RESEARCH Spellbound by the black hole 30 NEWS 32 THE FACES OF THE FOUNDATION A who ’ s who of the people behind the scenes at the Humboldt Foundation 33 FOCUS ON GERMANY AI in Germany – a fast-learning system IMPRINT  HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 111 PUBLISHER Alexander von Humboldt Foundation EDITOR IN CHIEF Georg Scholl (responsible), Mareike Ilsemann EDITORS Ulla Hecken, Lena Schnabel ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS Dr. Lynda Lich-Knight PRODUCTION & GRAPHICS Raufeld Medien GmbH Nina Koch (Project Managment), Carolin Kastner (Art Direction), Martin Rümmele (Art Direction) FREQUENCY twic a year CIRCULATION OF THE ISSUE 42000 PRINTER WM Druck + Verlag, Rheinbach ADDRESS Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Redaktion Humboldt kosmos Jean-Paul-Straße 12, 53173 Bonn, Germany presse@avh.de , www.humboldt-foundation.de ISSN 0344-0354 FOCUS 12 Tomorrow’s network The benefits of academic networks and how they need to keep developing. 20 The desert is alive! The Spanish ecologist Fernando T. Maestre on greening drylands and their role in mitigating climate change.