To Christian Zoschke, being able to do some small part to help both people and animals is good reason to sit in the lab every day, even in fantastic summer weather. Besides that, the 26-year-old doctoral candidate deals daily with the dangerous consequences of getting too much sunshine: As part of his doctoral project at the Institute of Pharmacy at Freie Universität Berlin, he is working on growing skin cancer in the lab.

After it was built, nearly 3,000 years ago, the monumental tomb located amid the gently rolling hills of the Prignitz district must have been visible from several kilometers away: a gigantic Bronze Age structure, a dome-shaped hill covered with rocks or a thin layer of grass, ten meters tall and 62 meters in diameter. Today, the tomb – which was discovered in 1899 during quarrying work for road construction near the village of Seddin, in the Prignitz district – lies tucked away under trees, between forests and meadows.

It buzzes, and it flies – at first glance, that’s all the “NeuroCopter” has in common with a bee. And yet, the busy insect was the role model for the most important part in this approximately 90-centimeter flying robot: the control center. Researchers from Freie Universität are working on developing a “brain” for the robot that is as complex as that of a bee – so the robot can learn for itself how to get around. The results of this fundamental research could help with things like enhancing the performance of navigation systems, such as GPS.