Marco Tamborini is a historian and philosopher of science and technology working at the intersection of philosophy, engineering, and the life sciences. He is Privatdozent at the Technical University of Darmstadt, where he teaches philosophy as well as the history and philosophy of science and technology, and serves as Principal Investigator of a major DFG-funded research project on hybrid systems and bionics.
His research explores how key concepts such as agency, control, autonomy, and responsibility are shaped by scientific practices and technological design. Situated at the crossroads of bioscience, ethics, and engineering, his work focuses particularly on bio-inspired and life-science-based technologies, including AI, robotics, biorobotics, bionics, biofabrication, synthetic biology, and bio-inspired architecture. Alongside these contemporary concerns, he also works on classical and modern philosophy, with a special interest in post-Kantian philosophy, Neo-Kantianism, phenomenology, neo-empiricism, philosophy of culture, and philosophical anthropology.
Beyond academia, Tamborini advises institutions and organizations on Responsible AI, human–machine interaction, bio-hybrid technologies, and the ethical and regulatory challenges associated with the EU AI Act, with the aim of bridging rigorous philosophical analysis and high-stakes technological innovation.
He completed his Habilitation (venia legendi in Philosophy) at TU Darmstadt in 2022. He earned his PhD in philosophy from Heidelberg University in 2015 and was a pre-doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. He also holds the Italian National Habilitation (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale) for full professorship in philosophy of science and associate professorship in theoretical philosophy. He is a member of the Junge Akademie at the Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz, a Fellow of the Johanna Quandt Young Academy, and an associate member of the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity.
Tamborini is the author of several influential books, including The Architecture of Evolution: The Science of Form in Twentieth-Century Evolutionary Biology (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022), Entgrenzung. Die Biologisierung der Technik und die Technisierung der Biologie (Meiner Verlag, 2022), Biorobotik (Junius Verlag, 2024), and Technikphilosophie: Neue Perspektiven für das 21. Jahrhundert (2023, co-authored). His forthcoming monograph Im Anfang war die Tat! Handlungen, Wissensproduktion und das Problem der Philosophiemethode will appear with Schwabe Verlag in 2026.
His work has been widely published in leading international journals in philosophy, history of science, and technology studies. He has received several awards, including the Athene Prize for Excellence in Teaching (2022) and the Everett Mendelsohn Prize for outstanding scholarship in the history of biology.
Tamborini has held numerous visiting and substitute professorships and research appointments across Europe, including at the University of Regensburg, the University of Turin, the University of Freiburg, EPFL Lausanne, the University of Cambridge, the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.
