Oh come on, just accept that the wording is wrong and intentionally misleading.

If a Country is named in the headline like this, it is always implied to be the state/government.

Even if we consider that not to be the case, just for the sake of the argument, you still can not say “a few people at this project” = “Germany (Society)”. I heavily caution you to not go down the generalization route of “a select group” = “german society”. You ought to think about what that assertion would mean in the context of hamas and palastinians.

Also TU is a public university, so it’s still an emanation of the state, state-funded and state-controlled.

While universities get funding from the state, they are mostly free to research what they choose. On the projects website is also no sign of direct funding by the state. You are free to criticize the research, but what you are implying is that the state should censor the direction of research because you don‘t like it, which is quite ironic.