Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization

On December 17, 2024, the Max Planck Society welcomed approximately 400 guests from politics, business, and society to its, Prelude 2025, held at the Festsaal Kreuzberg in Berlin. Max Planck Society President, Patrick Cramer, opened the event with a call for justice. In his speech, he advocated for the establishment of an independent Chief Scientific Advisor to the Federal Government, similar to roles held by Chief Scientific Advisors in countries such as Canada and the UK. 

How pieces of music by different composers and genres develop can be anticipated for different periods of time

Microplastic fibers are settling substantially slower than spherical particles in the atmosphere

The first self-driving cars are already on the road. Yet the technology is not yet fully developed, and certain ethical issues remain unsolved. It is also high time to think about how the new technology can promote sustainable transportation in the future.

Viola Priesemann's life has changed a great deal since the corona epidemic first started in Germany: Priesemann, the head of a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, is now investigating not only information processing in the brain, but also how the SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads. And ever since, her daily routine has included consultations with policymakers, giving interviews, and appearing on TV.

For Ragnar Fleischmann, it was a surprising discovery: in simulations depicting the flow of electrons in semiconductors, he observed behavior resembling that of tsunamis and rogue waves on the open sea. Today, his team at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Goettingen is researching electronic processes with a view to improving forecasts of destructive waves.

It is extremely difficult to get around in rural areas without a car of your own, either due to a lack of public transport or because scheduled buses are infrequent. That is why a team led by physicist Stephan Herminghaus, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Goettingen, have developed the EcoBus, a system that lets customers order a bus directly to their front door. The special thing about it is that, unlike other on-call systems, rather than poaching customers, the EcoBus will augment existing public transport services.

Turbulence is omnipresent: it plays an important role during planet formation, mixes fuel and air in the cylinder of an engine, but also increases the energy needed for pumps to push oil through pipelines. Björn Hof and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen investigate the finer points of how it originates and search for tricks to prevent the eddies from forming where they interfere.

New forms and sources of energy need new power lines as well. In the future, a larger number of small, distributed wind and solar installations in place of a smaller number of large power plants are projected to supply Germany with energy. At the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, the Network Dynamics Group headed by Marc Timme is investigating how the high-voltage grid will respond to this and how it can be optimized.

We develop model agents whose cognitive capacity can be constrained and who act human-like in public goods games. Exploring their collective behavior in networked game geometries will pave the way to predictive simulations of social equilibria and instabilities. Initial results show remarkable universalities in the dependence of willingness to invest in public goods on the degree of connectedness of game groups. These correlate well with everyday experience, which renders the agent model promising for further exploration.

Despite numerous research approaches it is still not well-understood how the individual components of a cell self-organize to form a living cell. In the recently established Department of Living Matter Physics, we search for new physics in living systems, bridging the scales from individual molecules to macroscopic systems to uncover general principles in the organization and emergence of living matter as well as synthetic, life-like active matter. 

In early 2020, the world was taken by surprise by a virus: SARS-CoV-2 spread at blazing speed and confronted everyone with unexpected challenges. Within weeks, we in Göttingen produced groundbreaking new insights into the spread and containment of COVID-19: We analyzed and predicted the spread, quantified aerosol exposure and effectiveness of masks, and designed realistic containment strategies. We made all of these findings available to the public as quickly as possible via press releases, interviews and position papers.

In order to reduce the volume of traffic on our roads, the number of passengers per vehicle must be increased. This can be achieved by ride-pooling and by strengthening scheduled services. Using statistical physics methods, we have developed a general description whose predictions we have been able to confirm through experiments (i.e. pilot projects). We have now brought this system close to market maturity. We are aiming at large scale commercial deployment in the near future, with the aim of increasing sustainable mobility in the countryside and the quality of life in cities.

The insufficient understanding of cloud physics is a major source of uncertainty in weather and climate models.  In addition to water vapour, clouds consist of water droplets and ice particles. Their dynamics are significantly influenced by the high degree of turbulence within the clouds. The question of better weather and climate predictions is therefore closely linked to the understanding of turbulence and its role in cloud microphysics. A better understanding of these phenomena is the goal of new experimental and theoretical investigations at the MPIDS.