The centre serves to promote interdisciplinary research on and with data-driven and data-processing methods. It connects scientists with fundamental and method-oriented research at the university, including non-university research institutions. Gaining insights from data has become an essential part of research in almost all scientific disciplines. The development and systematic investigation of methods for data analysis and knowledge extraction is central to applications in a wide range of research areas.

The centre's goal is to promote cross-faculty and cross-location research into methods of data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The members of the centre will focus on basic research into methods while also identifying opportunities for applying these methods in fields such as medicine and life sciences, natural sciences, economics, law and computer science with its sub-disciplines. Methods are understood here to mean mathematical and algorithmic procedures, including their interpretability, robustness and security.