Dresden University of Technology: Cornerstone Laid for New Research Building Dedicated to Digital Transformation
A modern new research building, the Lehmann Center Office Building, is being constructed for the Center for Interdisciplinary Digital Sciences (CIDS) at Dresden University of Technology (TUD). It is located right next to the Lehmann Center’s data center, which opened in 2015.
The EU and the German Federal State of Saxony are investing approximately 101 million euros in the project. The new building will provide TUD with modern office space, seminar and meeting rooms, and state-of-the-art laboratories and workshops. The open building layout — featuring five stories, a central lecture hall, two foyers, and flexible meeting and project spaces — provides room for scientific exchange, knowledge transfer, and public events. Conferences, workshops, exhibitions, and demonstrations can make research visible and tangible here.
Completion of the new building is scheduled for 2029. Construction began in August 2025 under the leadership of the Saxony Real Estate and Construction Management Agency (SIB).
While the Lehmann Center Data Center, which opened in 2015, provides the digital infrastructure — including high-performance computers as well as central server and storage systems — for TUD and numerous partner institutions, the new Lehmann Center office building creates space for the people behind the digital sciences: researchers, faculty, developers, service teams, and partners from academia, industry, and politics. Located in the immediate vicinity of the School of Computer Science, this creates a unique environment that fosters digital innovation from basic research through to practical application. Together, the two buildings form the Lehmann Center, a hub for digital infrastructure, research, and interdisciplinary collaboration. In the future, the new building — spanning approximately 11,000 square meters — will house up to 600 CIDS employees from research, development, IT infrastructure, and research-related services, who will address key questions of digital transformation.
The Center for Interdisciplinary Digital Sciences (CIDS) at TUD brings together research, digital infrastructure, and science-related services under one organizational umbrella, thereby laying the foundation for new forms of interdisciplinary collaboration. Researchers from the natural sciences, engineering, humanities, social sciences, and life sciences work together at CIDS to develop solutions for the challenges of digital transformation. The spectrum ranges from high-performance computing, data analytics, and artificial intelligence to digital education and communication technologies, modeling, simulation, and networked systems, all the way to questions of societal transformation and the interaction of complex technical and social systems.