Marco Tamborini

Marco Tamborini is a historian and philosopher of science and technology currently serving as a substitute full professor at the University of Regensburg for the summer semester of 2025. He is based at the Technical University of Darmstadt where he holds the position of Privatdozent and serves as Principal Investigator for a German Research Foundation (DFG) project on 'Hybrid Systems, Bionics, and the Circulation of Morphological Knowledge.' Tamborini is also a member of the Junge Akademie | Mainz, a fellow of the Johanna Quandt Young Academy, and an associate member at the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity«.

Tamborini completed his Habilitation (venia legendi for 'Philosophy') at the Technical University of Darmstadt in 2022. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, Heidelberg in 2015, following pre-doctoral work at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. He also holds the Italian National Habilitation in Science (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale) for both full professorship in philosophy of science and associate professorship in theoretical philosophy.

Dr. Tamborini's research lies at the intersection of (bio)science, technology and ethics, with particular focus on life sciences and bio-inspired engineering disciplines including AI, robotics, biorobotics, biofabrication, synthetic biology, bionics, and bio-inspired architecture. He also works extensively on classical philosophical topics from the 18th to 21st century, with special attention to Kant, Herbart, Lotze, Husserl, Neo-Kantianism, Phenomenology, Neo-Empiricism, philosophy of culture, and philosophical anthropology.

His recent publications demonstrate a consistent focus on the dissolution of boundaries between biology and technology, examining how morphological knowledge circulates between scientific disciplines and informs bio-inspired engineering. Tamborini's work bridges historical analysis with philosophical reflection, particularly in exploring how concepts of form, structure, and function evolve across biological and technical domains.

Dr. Tamborini has received several prestigious awards for his scholarship and teaching:

• Athene Preis Gute Lehre 2022 - Prize for outstanding teaching at TU Darmstadt
• Everett Mendelsohn Prize (2017) - For the best article published in Journal of the History of Biology
• Honorable mention from Italian Society of the History of Science (2020)

As Principal Investigator for the DFG-funded project 'Hybrid Systems, Bionics, and the Circulation of Morphological Knowledge,' Tamborini leads research examining how morphological knowledge circulates between biological sciences and engineering disciplines. His work has been supported by various institutions including the Ernst Ludwig Mobility Grant that facilitated his visiting fellowship at Clare Hall, Cambridge. Tamborini has supervised numerous students through his teaching positions at multiple institutions and has been an active mentor in the Junge Akademie | Mainz.

Dr. Tamborini collaborates with several research groups including the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« and has worked with the Biorobotics Laboratory at EPFL. His DFG project involves interdisciplinary teams examining the historical and philosophical dimensions of bio-technical systems. Tamborini has also been affiliated with the Cluster of Excellence Living, Adaptive and Energy-autonomous Materials Systems (liv MatS) at the University of Freiburg, contributing philosophical perspectives to their bio-inspired materials research.