VOILA 

A voice-operated, open-source intelligent tutor for gifted primary-aged children. Designed to spark curiosity and support discovery learning across scientific topics, VOILA tailors interactions with prompts, hints, and scaffolded guidance.

The ELLIS Institute Tübingen and the Hector Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology are delighted to announce the initiation of the Hector AI + Education Future Fund, a transformative initiative uniting artificial intelligence (AI) and educational research to develop practical, ethical, and accessible solutions for schools and learners. The Fund is supported by a €6.2 million grant from the H.W. & J. Hector Foundation. This project is supported by the Tübingen AI Center as well as the Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems and lead by Principal Investigator Wieland Brendel.

Supporting Research: Ethics, Rights, and Implementation

To ensure responsible deployment and sustainable impact, three integrated research strands accompany these innovation projects:

• Ethics – Developing guidelines for transparent and consent-based use of AI chatbots in educational settings.

• Rights – Evaluating AI in education through fundamental rights under EU law, including data protection, non-discrimination, and human dignity.

• Implementation – Investigating barriers and enablers of deploying AI innovations in real educational environments.

Local and Collaborative Synergies

The initiative is deeply embedded in Tübingen’s broader research ecosystem, involving:

• University of Tübingen
  • Tübingen AI Center
  • Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology and LEAD network
• Leibniz Institute for Knowledge Media (IWM)
• Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
• Computational Health Center at Helmholtz Munich
• Pädagogische Hochschule Ludwigsburg
• ELLIS Institute Tübingen