The International Graduate Research Group on "Cross-Modal Interaction in Natural and Artificial Cognitive Systems" has been established as a cooperation between the University of Hamburg, Germany and Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 2006. The two universities collabortate in offering a joint post-graduate research education program as well as in providing an optimal research environment in the field of cognitive science, human science and robotics.

Cross-modal or multisensory interaction is a cutting-edge research topic. So far, natural systems still outperform artificial ones in most cognitive tasks. We propose that this performance disadvantage of artificial systems is due to their primarily unimodal processing, while natural systems usually have access to the input of several sensory modalities.

Our basic research concept can be summarized as follows:

• Extraction of biological principles and improved understanding of the cross-modal integration in humans. Both the cognitive field and the interface with intelligent systems architectures and software design will benefit from this sort of theoretical model.
• Introduction of biological principles into artificial intelligent systems. A principal aim of this international graduate research group is to bring together these concepts for the mutual benefit of practitioners from a number of disciplines.
• After a decade of emphasis on the study of small-scale (molecular or genomic level) brain mechanisms, it is expected that future advances will arise from a more integrated view (large-scale) of brain function including cross-modal interactions.

Expected benefits of this research cooperation:

• International interdisciplinary research.
• Competence and complementary expertise.
• Maximal use of resources.
• International research training in a German-Chinese context.
• Language-independent approach.