The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Germany’s Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) launched a 10-year collaboration focused on research, teaching, and student exchange at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and creativity.
The new AI and Creativity Hub will be jointly led by the MIT Morningside Academy for Design, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, and HPI in Potsdam, Germany. The initiative is funded by the Hasso Plattner Foundation, although the announcement did not specify a dollar amount.
According to officials, the partnership will support interdisciplinary research, educational programs, fellowships, and faculty engagement tied to AI and creativity.
“As we hear from our faculty, as the Information Age gives way to an era of imagination, we expect a new emphasis on human creativity,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said. “Through this collaboration, MIT and HPI are creating a shared space where students and faculty will come together across disciplines to explore new ideas, experiment with emerging tools, and invent new frontiers at the intersection of human creativity and AI.”
The collaboration began with a two-day workshop on March 19-20 at MIT’s Schwarzman College of Computing. The workshop brought together faculty, students, and researchers to set early priorities. Early focus areas included AI and creative practice, AI-driven scientific discovery, and the use of AI in organizations and entrepreneurship.
MIT said faculty will also have the opportunity to pitch joint project ideas, with proposals for new projects due in June 2026.
The new hub builds on an earlier MIT-HPI research collaboration launched in November 2022. That eight-year program, also funded by the Hasso Plattner Foundation, focused on designing for sustainability and joint research spanning design, innovation, and digital technologies.
Rouven Westphal of the Hasso Plattner Foundation said this latest collaboration between the two institutions will be a long-term endeavor.
“When HPI and MIT come together across disciplines and borders, they create exactly that,” Westphal said. “The Hasso Plattner Foundation is committed to supporting this collaboration for the long term, building on Hasso Plattner’s vision of uniting technological excellence with human-centered design and creativity.”
MIT officials said the hub is intended to create a cross-campus academic community supported by Hasso Plattner-named professorships and graduate fellowships, along with workshops, hackathons, summer exchanges, and shared governance through a steering committee. The long-term framework is designed to support faculty appointments, doctoral training, and collaborative research across both institutions.
Dan Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, said the effort will examine how AI can expand creative work rather than replace it.
“Our goal is to explore that intersection with rigor and build a cross-disciplinary scholarly and research community that shapes how AI supports the creation of new ideas and knowledge,” he said.
