Prof. Alexander Gerber

Our research group aims at crossing what is often seen as the divide between scholarship and practice. We are a community of staff and students trying to bring together research and teaching on communication as an agent of social innovation and sustainable system change. We share a vision of trans-disciplinary research that includes a wide range of stakeholders in co-creation. 
Grounded in Prof. Gerber's Research Chair on Artificial Intelligence in Tertiary Education, our research also circles around digital transformation, as in the "Sokrates^t" project. 
A school of thought we have helped to establish, is Evidence-based Science Communication (Jensen & Gerber, 2020), arguing for an improved knowledge exchange between scholarship and practice to make communication more strategic, effective, and inclusive, putting public interests at the heart of how knowledge is produced, shared, and applied in open democratic societies.
Examples for the systemic approach of our work are the first in-depth empirical field analysis of science communication research (Gerber et al., 2020), and our research-led teaching on Corporate Sustainability and Social Innovation.

Over the past few years, the research in our group included several contract-research projects for industry and private foundations, as well as seven EU-funded projects (Horizon 2020 / Horizon Europe), such as the coordination  of the "NUCLEUS" project on anticipatory institutional governance and culture change. Other projects such as RRING, GRRIP, TeRRIFICA and Ô, focused on social innovation and sustainability communication, including highly interdisciplinary forms of participatory design and stakeholder management. The CREATIONS project focused on integrating arts in science education. 
The department also co-hosted Europe's largest Summer School for Science Communication ("STEAM"), originally funded through the Erasmus+ scheme for three years, later transformed into a social enterprise. Based on two DAAD-funded initiatives, we have established a university collaboration with the Royal University of Phnom Penh (Cambidia).
Department Chair, Prof. Gerber, has supervised science communication evaluation projects for national and regional governments, in his function as Research Director of the Institute for Science and Innovation Communication (inscico), which is also part of the recently-launched EU Green Deal project AURORA on environmental impacts monitoring for the sustainability transformation. In 2011, Prof. Gerber initiated and coordinated the first "Trend Study" on Science Communication (Stifterverband der Deutschen Wissenschaft), followed by another edition in 2018.

Before joining Rhine-Waal University, Prof. Gerber has worked as a science journalist / author / film director, and later became Head of Marketing & Communications at Fraunhofer Group (ICT) for seven years. He also founded and served as editor-in-chief of InnoVisions Magazine. 
Prof. Gerber serves on various Advisory Boards, for instance for the European Food Information Council and the regional chamber of commerce's (IHK) Research & Innovation Committee. 

• Gerber, A., & Niechoj, T. (2025). Kl auf dem Campus: Von der Empirie zur Strategie. In R. Queckenberg, J. Leschke, & M. Persike (editors), Learning Analytics, Artificial Intelligence und Data Mining in der Hochschulbildung: Beiträge zur Learning AID 2024 (pp. 131–138). transcript Verlag.
• Bokalič, M., Cristóbal, A. B., Victoria, M., Cavaco, A., Williams, E., Gerber, A., Brocklehurst, M., & Topič, M. (2024). A Rationale to Foster the Role of Energy Communities in Creating Inclusive Social Hubs for Citizen Science in Energy Aspects. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12801441.
• Gerber, A., & Niechoj, T. (2024). KI auf dem Campus: Chancen und Herausforderungen. Die neue Hochschule, 3, 30–33. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11203051.
• Gerber, A. (2023). Editorial: Evidence-based science communication in the COVID-19 era. Frontiers in Communication, 8, 1279202. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2023.1279202.
• Pfleger, A., Gerber, A., & Struck, A. (2022). Strategic communication at the European Space Agency: juxtaposing strategy and public attitudes. Journal of Science Communication, 21(06), A02. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.21060202.
• Farrugia, D. M., Vilches, S. L., & Gerber, A. (2021). Effective inter-organisational networks for Responsible Research and Innovation and global sustainability: a scoping review. Open Research Europe, 1, 144. https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.13796.2.
• Jensen, E. A., Reed, M., Jensen, A. M., & Gerber, A. (2021). Evidence-based research impact praxis: Integrating scholarship and practice to ensure research benefits society. Open Research Europe, 1, 137. https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.14205.1.
• Jensen, E. A., Jensen, A. M., Reed, M., & Gerber, A. (2021). Evidence-based research impact praxis: Integrating scholarship and practice to ensure research benefits society. Open Research Europe, 1, 137. https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.14205.2.
• Gerber, A., Forsberg, E.-M., Shelley-Egan, C., Arias, R., Daimer, S., Dalton, G., Cristóbal, A. B., Dreyer, M., Grießler, E., Lindner, R., Revuelta, G., Riccio, A., & Steinhaus, N. (2020). Joint declaration on mainstreaming RRI across Horizon Europe. Journal of Responsible Innovation, 7(3), 708–711. https://doi.org/10.1080/23299460.2020.1764837.
• Gerber, A. (2020). Science Communication Research: an Empirical Field Analysis. European Organization for Nuclear Research. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4028704.
• Gerber, A. (2020). Experiments guiding policies for the future of RRI. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4028658.
• Jensen, E. A., & Gerber, A. (2020). Evidence-Based Science Communication. Frontiers in Communication, 4, 78. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2019.00078.
• Gerber, A. (2018). RRI: How to ‘mainstream’ the ‘upstream’ engagement. Journal of Science Communication, 17(03), C06. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.17030306.
• Gerber, A. (2013). Science Caught Flat-Footed: How Academia Struggles with Open Science Communication. In S. Bartling & S. Friesike (editors), Opening Science: The Evolving Guide on How the Internet is Changing Research, Collaboration and Scholarly Publishing (1 ed., pp. 73–80). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00026-8_4.
• Gerber, A., & Neuhaus, J. (2013). Revolution mit Hindernissen: Studie zu den Perspektiven von “Social Media” in der Wissenschaft. Wissenschaftsmanagement, 19(4), 18–21.
• Alexander, G. (2012). Vertrauen im Online-Handel: Wie man es evaluiert und steigert. AV Akademikerverlag.
• Gerber, A. (2012). Online Trends from the First German Trend Study on Science Communication. In A. Tokar, M. Beurskens, S. Keuneke, M. Mahrt, I. Peters, C. Puschmann, T. van Treeck, & K. Weller (editors), Science and the Internet. düsseldorf university press.
• Gerber, A. (2012). Vorhang auf für Phase 5: Trendstudie ; Chancen, Risiken und Forderungen für die nächste Entwicklungsstufe der Wissenschaftskommunikation (1 ed.). Innokomm.
• Gerber, A. (2011). Schluss mit der Isolationspolitik. In R. Lisowski, C. Meyer, M. Schmidt, C. Spitzer-Ewersmann, & S. Wesselmann (editors), Wissensbasierte Stadtentwicklung: 16 Beispiele aus der Praxis (pp. 132–137). Edition Stifterverband.
• Gerber, A. (2008). Antennen müssen auf Empfang stehen. Wissenschaftsmanagement, 20–29.
• Gerber, A. (2008). Stethoskop statt Megaphon: Die Rolle der Unternehmenskommunikation bei Open Innovation. Innovationsmanager: Magazin für Innovationskultur, 28–29.

• 01/02/2025 - 31/10/2025 | Tests adaptiver KI-Tutoren für validierte Lernprozesse mit sokratischen Dialogen | Funder: Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen - MKW | Go to project