Michael S. D. Kormann
A translational scientist who spent twenty years watching a pattern repeat: the data goes public while the understanding stays locked in the infrastructure. Compute Freedom is the answer to that pattern, aimed at artificial intelligence.
01 — The ScientistWhere this comes from
I am a biologist and, since 2011, a professor for Translational Genomics and Gene Therapy in pediatrics at the University of Tübingen, working at the University Children's Hospital in pediatric infectiology and immunology. My laboratory's work centres on mRNA-based gene therapy — the same class of technology that later became familiar to the world through mRNA vaccines — and on genetic correction for diseases such as cystic fibrosis.
- Doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) in Biology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich.
- Professor of Translational Genomics and Gene Therapy in Pediatrics, University of Tübingen.
- Former European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant holder.
- Publications in journals including Nature Biotechnology and the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
- International recognition including the Maurizio Vignola Award; holder of several patents in mRNA therapeutics.
02 — The PatternOpen data, closed understanding
In science, information can be public while understanding remains concentrated. Data may be shared, papers may be accessible, methods may be described — and the real power still sits in the infrastructure that turns information into knowledge. I have lived inside that gap for a career. The data was open. The understanding was not.
Artificial intelligence is now reproducing that structure at civilizational scale. The language of openness remains, but the substance of control is moving into centralized compute, centralized inference, and centralized permission. Weights released to the public that only run on hyperscaler hardware are a formal gesture without functional substance.
If intelligence becomes infrastructure, its governance cannot remain private.
03 — The ProjectWhy I built Compute Freedom
Compute Freedom is not a personal platform. It argues for two legal obligations: a lower boundary — the right of the citizen to run capable AI on their own hardware — and an upper boundary — a binding international treaty for frontier development that no single corporation or state holds the mandate to pursue alone. The full argument lives on the main page.
I write under my own name because a manifesto about accountability should carry the accountability of a signature. If you want to challenge the argument, improve it, or take it apart, the contact channel and the forum are open.
Find me
- LinkedIn — Michael Kormann
- X — @michael_kormann
- Bluesky — @mkormann.bsky.social
- Instagram — @prof_dr_michael_kormann
- Mastodon — @the_sad_professor
Some details on this page are drawn from public records and may be simplified — corrections welcome. For the legally required provider information, see the Impressum.