Lise Meitner Groups

Meitner Group Planet Formation
Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen
Earth is, to date, the only known planet on which life exists. This makes it unique for us humans. At the same time, we know that our planet is just one tiny part of a vast cosmos filled with billions of stars and planetary systems in the Milky Way, and countless galaxies beyond. To gain an even deeper understanding of Earth within the vast context of this immense cosmos, Joanna Drążkowska and her team are developing a comprehensive model. They aim to demonstrate how planets in our Solar System, as well as exoplanets beyond the gravitational influence of the Sun, are formed. For the first time, they have incorporated every developmental phase, thereby illustrating the entire journey from micrometre-sized dust particles to fully formed planets.

Lise Meitner Group Multiscale Cloud Physics
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg
They are an inescapable part of life on Earth: the clouds in the sky. However, they are, in the truest sense of the word, hard to grasp—even for research. This represents an unresolved issue, as clouds play a central role in the climate system. How they change in a warming world substantially determines, for instance, the actual rate of temperature increase with rising CO₂ levels. In view of this, Franziska Glassmeier and her team aim to render the role of clouds in climate modelling more predictable through a new research approach. Their methodology intends to capture the collective behaviour of entire cloud fields across various scales, instead of focusing on the detailed processes of individual clouds.

Lise Meitner Group Hominin Palaeogenomics (HOPE)
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig
How did we humans become the beings we are today? What distinguishes the modern human (Homo sapiens) from its sister groups, the Neanderthals or the Denisovans? It is an established fact that, through the course of evolution, Homo sapiens emerged as the prevailing species, while all its archaic antecedents and sister groups disappeared. The research team led by Mateja Hajdinjak and her team are investigating how this came about. Using their refined methods, they are examining DNA extracted from skeletal remains of Neanderthals and modern humans dating back between 30,000 and 50,000 years. In doing so, they discovered that there were multiple instances of genetic intermixing. This finding indicates that the two human groups must have encountered one another and co-existed for a period of time. The research group led by Hajdinjak is currently examining which genetic and additional factors enabled Homo sapiens to outlast its relatives.

Lise Meitner Group Statistical physics beyond equilibrium
Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen
Sarah Loos and her group study complex systems that are constantly in flux. In these systems, energy is continuously injected at the microscopic level, preventing them from settling into a balanced equilibrium state. Examples range from living matter, chemically or optically driven particles, to learning computer systems. The team investigates entropy and energy flows, phase transitions and fluctuations, in order to uncover fundamental principles that govern nonequilibrium processes. Another goal is to derive strategies for the targeted control of nonequilibrium processes. This research could be relevant for both biological and technological applications, such as improving our understanding of collective behavior of living organisms or developing more efficient machines and nanoscale robots.

Lise Meitner Group Mechanistic Structural Biology
Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, Frankfurt am Main
At the center of nearly all life is the flow of electrons, tiny charged particles that can move from one molecule to another in so-called ‘redox reactions’. Bonnie Murphy and her team are dedicated to understanding how these reactions are carried out by specialized proteins in the cell, with roles in bioenergetics, regulation and biosynthesis. Many human redox protein complexes are highly similar to those found across the tree of life, and comparative studies can be useful to understand how they work. In the microbial world, the diversity and complexity of redox proteins is on another scale entirely. Understanding how these highly evolved complexes carry out their reactions helps to explain how different microbes thrive in different environments, but also how the growth of those microbes shapes the environment on local and global scales.  With this aim in mind, the Murphy lab studies processes including CO₂ fixation and methane generation, as well as sulfur and nitrogen cycling. Their work is strongly dependent on the use of cryo-electron microscopy, and they actively contribute to further developing these methods. In particular, the group adapts existing techniques for elemental mapping in the electron microscope so that they can be applied to fragile biological complexes. These approaches are expected to help answer fundamental questions concerning energy conversion in biology, the role of microorganisms in climate and the carbon cycle, and metal-dependent processes relevant to human health.

Lise Meitner Group Dark Matter and Quantum sensors
Max Planck Institute for Physics, Garching
How can dark matter be detected? This is a question that researchers worldwide are grappling with. The challenge lies in the fact that dark matter does not interact electromagnetically with known matter, emits no light, and is therefore invisible. To date, only the DAMA/LIBRA experiment claims to have measured signals from dark matter. However, no other experiment has yet been able to confirm this result in a model-independent way. This is where Karoline Schäffner and her team come in. They have set up the COSINUS experiment in the Gran Sasso underground laboratory to test the controversial DAMA/LIBRA signal. With the technical commissioning now largely complete, the first measurement using the world’s first  cryogenic sodium iodide detector array is scheduled to begin in early 2026. Looking ahead, Schäffner's team will focus on further developing these detectors, which employ a novel quantum sensor layout, to explore previously inaccessible regions of parameter space and potentially detect very light dark matter. Moreover, the innovative detector technology opens new opportunities for studying other rare-event processes.

Lise Meitner Group Host Defence Mechanisms
Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Munich
Antibiotic resistance is on the rise globally, increasing the risk that patients may die from bacterial infection if their immune systems cannot overcome a pathogen and drug treatment is no longer effective due to multidrug resistance. In response to this growing global health challenge, Marion Schuller and her research group are striving to develop novel antibacterial strategies. To this end, they study how phages — viruses that infect and kill bacteria — invade their hosts for replication and how bacteria defend themselves against such attacks. By deepening our understanding of this interaction, the Schuller lab aims to discover new antibiotic drug targets and to engineer phages with increased therapeutic safety and efficacy.

Lise Meitner Group Postpartum Neurocircuits
Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research, Cologne
Parenthood is experienced by most as a profound and life-changing event. From a biological perspective, the most significant alterations occur within the bodies of mothers. Even during pregnancy—and even more so after birth—their metabolism and hormonal secretion undergo drastic changes. Silvana Valtcheva and her team are investigating the processes that take place in the brain during this time. They are analysing how the neural circuits in the brain are restructured after childbirth, thereby becoming receptive to the sensory stimuli emitted by the offspring. By employing a diverse array of methods, they demonstrate how newborns and their mothers communicate with one another. Their particular interest lies in understanding how the stimuli sent out by the infant are processed in the mother's brain, prompting the mother to respond appropriately.

 

Lise Meitner Group Technology and Sovereignty
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne
Our world is becoming increasingly digital. All areas of life are now shaped by digital technologies. These technologies are redefining social, economic, and political relationships, while at the same time being influenced by the socio-political frameworks of society. Carola Westermeier and her team are investigating the interactions of technology and sovereignty: For instance, how do digital currencies alter financial relations? And what tensions arise between the right to data protection and the demands of the digital economy, which seeks to systematically collect and utilise as much data as possible? Westermeier’s research group is analysing the challenges of digital transformation and laying the foundations for comprehensive solutions.

Lise Meitner group Evolutionary Diversification and Innovation
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön, Germany
There is an extraordinary diversity of life on earth. Yet, a closer look reveals that some traits readily evolve time and again, while others seem difficult if not impossible to evolve. Nathalie Feiner and her team aim to unravel what makes biological systems evolvable. Using lizards as study systems, they take an integrative approach to decipher the developmental rules that underpin evolutionary diversification and the emergence of novel colours, patterns and shapes.

Lise Meitner Group Non-Hermitian topological phenomena
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Erlangen, Germany
In my theory group, we study non-Hermitian topological phenomena. In particular, we investigate models that describe real-world setups, which explicitly take into account the effects of their surroundings. The lens through which these models are studied is that of condensed matter physics and topology, which is a branch of mathematics studying the properties of objects. It turns out that the environment can have a dramatic impact on the features of a system, and typically results in exotic phenomena far beyond conventional cases. The study of such setups is a new and exciting interdisciplinary research field with applications both in classical and quantum physics. In my group, we study open quantum systems, non-linear optical setups as well as quantum materials highly relevant for solid state physics.

Lise Meitner Group Bacteriophages
Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany
Our research group focuses on studying the viruses of bacteria, called bacteriophages, which stand as the most abundant and diverse biological entity on our planet. Many enzymes, which are conserved in cellular organisms such as, for example, RNA polymerases, are not conserved in bacteriophages and therefore exhibit unique properties. Investigating the diversity of molecular machines and processes that have evolved in bacteriophages provides valuable insights into the evolution and offers a source of new biotechnological tools. Currently, our research is focused on understanding the mechanisms of transcription by unusual phage RNA polymerases, their coupling to the translocation of phage DNA into the host cell, and the mechanisms of the translation of phage genes.

Lise Meitner Group Cognitive Neurogenetics in a social context
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
How does the structure of the human brain support its functions? The answer to this question lies at the intersection of gene-environment interactions and a refined balance of stability and plasticity. The social environment may be particularly relevant due to the prolonged human neurodevelopment and the ongoing influence of social learning upon the human brain. Sofie Valk and her team combine insights from neuroscience, social psychology, evolutionary biology, and genetics and employ advanced computational techniques to connect biology and the mind across systems and scales.

Lise Meitner Group BirthRites: Cultures of Reproduction
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
The ways we construct and organize biological reproduction are at the heart of human social life. And the demographic outcomes of these structured cultural worlds in turn shape the contours of evolution. A century of anthropology has uncovered immense variation in the motivations and institutions regulating reproduction. We know almost nothing about how these features coevolve with demographic structures or how they scale up to generate macro demographic patterns. The aims of this interdisciplinary group are: to better understand the relationship between culture and demography in the past, present and future; to develop theoretical models of reproductive dynamics grounded in the field of cultural evolution, and to draw together research practices from the humanities and sciences.

Lise Meitner Group Organic Bioelectronics
Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, Germany
Electronics have evolved in only a few decades from being bulky and slow to becoming light-weight and an integral part of our daily lives in multiple ways. But how will future electronics look like? Ulrike Kraft and her team are investigating  a new class of flexible and stretchable organic electronic materials, specifically conducting polymers and their potential applications in electronic devices such as transistors and biosensors. Due to their printability on elastic substrates, mechanical flexibility, biocompatibility and softness (in compliance with biological tissues), these novel organic electronic materials and devices offer the potential of revolutionizing personalized medicine and health monitoring applications.

Lise Meitner Group Coded Objects
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, Florence, Italy
The design and distribution of information has gained increasing importance in global politics and economics. And yet, the formal and material implications of “codes” often remain unnoticed or unexamined —just as the reverse  impact of objects  on design processes  in our environments. We therefore propose to look at the space of coding not as abstract technology or remote activity, but at the cultural, social, and aesthetic programming of objects through design. What would it mean to take "Coded Objects" not as stable denominator of things, but as a methodological investigation of form-giving operations and the materiality of design? Taking "Coded Objects" as method of refraction, our multi-disciplinary research group will question any assumptions of "neutral" technology or immaterial bureaucracy. Instead, we seek to investigate how values are concretely shaped through aesthetic and material means , thereby unveiling uncomfortable friction and productive affinities necessary for our research to bear on the present.

Lise Meitner Group Endangered objects: decay, loss and conservation in art history
Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome, Italy
We want artworks to last as long as possible. We safeguard them from natural decay, wars, vandalism. We study the original condition at the time of their creation, but we also know that changes are inevitable. Francesca Borgo and her group investigate what happens to ageing artefacts over time. To better understand the mechanics of decay and loss, they focus on how the physical instability of objects defines the way they are treated.

Lise Meitner Group In search of a new, light physics
Max Planck Institute for Physics, Munich, Germany
We still don’t know what the Dark Matter of the universe is made of. Presumably, novel types of elementary particles form this mysterious cosmic substance. Up until to now, it has only been possible to detect it indirectly through gravitation – the mutual attraction of masses. Babette Döbrich and her group are also involved in the worldwide search for a concrete trace of Dark Matter. They collaborate in experiments to discover new, light particles of which it might consist.

Lise Meitner Group Spin3D: three-dimensional magnetic systems
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden, Germany
Magnets are omnipresent in our everyday lives: they have a key role to play in energy generation and data processing. Yet the physics of magnets and the search for how to harness them beyond known applications remain mostly two-dimensional. Claire Donnelly and her group are applying new techniques to push into the third dimension. With their 3D experiments, they seek to lay the foundations for more environment-friendly and more powerful magnetic devices.

Lise Meitner Group Active Sensing
Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, Martinsried, Germany
Our eyes are constantly on the move. However, we rarely take note of this consciously because the brain partially suppresses visual perception as these movements occur. Lisa Fenk and her team are seeking to understand how the brain filters visual features as relevant (or irrelevant), thereby determining what we actively and consciously see. They use fruit flies as a model organism: these can move their retina via tiny muscles, and the resulting eye movements are surprisingly similar to our own.

Lise Meitner Group Language and Computation in Neural Systems
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands
Are we humans still superior to artificial intelligence? In the field of language and its processing, this is clearly the case. Only human beings can understand and name things they have never heard of before. Our stored linguistic knowledge in our brains goes far beyond learned knowledge and distributional information gained from experience. Andrea Martin and her group are investigating how the brain can store and use both structured and statistical linguistic information.

Lise Meitner Group Genome organization and regulation
Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Göttingen, Germany
The ability of cells to precisely regulate the activity of their genes enables the development of complex organisms with hundreds of specialized cell types which all share the same DNA sequence. In her research, Marieke Oudelaar investigates the molecular mechanisms by which gene activity is regulated during development. In particular, her group focusses on the spatial organization of the DNA within cells and how the resulting 3D structures are related to the activity of the genes they contain.

Lise Meitner Group Social Behaviour
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany
Living in groups comes with both advantages and disadvantages. For example, group-living enables division of labor, which can increase efficiency; on the other hand, it can facilitate the spread of infectous diseases. Yuko Ulrich and her team are investigating the causes and consequences of social behavior, and whether there may actually be forms of social organisation that can reduce disease transmission, using ants as an experimental system.

Lise Meitner Group China in the Global System of Science
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany
China has become the world’s largest producer of scientific articles and a fast climber in global university rankings. The Chinese government is promoting this rise, differentiating strongly between the natural and the social sciences, and aiming at a political control of science. Anna Ahlers will elaborate a sociology of science with her research group that focusses on the political regime and societal values as environmental factors for science in China and for the global system of science.

Lise Meitner Group Cellular computations and learning
Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology of Behavior - caesar, Bonn, Germany
Cells process information in real-time and respond to combination of chemical signals that vary both in space and time. Such information processing dynamically resembles the sensory computations of the neural microcircuits in the cerebral cortex. Aneta Koseska wants to develop a generic theory of computations and learning on the level of biochemical networks in single cells.

Lise Meitner Group Technological Primates
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig
Tool use paved the way for human development in an evolutionary trajectory. Surprisingly, very little is known regarding the origin and evolution of human tool use. Lydia Luncz studies non-human primates as a model for potential tool behaviour of early hominins. Comparisons between species help to expand our knowledge regarding the adaptive significance of tool use and substantially further our understanding of the cultural and behavioral evolution of humans.

Lise Meitner Group Metal-Organic Framework and Nanoparticle Catalysis
Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim / Ruhr, Germany
The research topics in my group are clustered around problems that, if solved, would either enable or significantly improve the sustainable production of vital resources. The design of a catalyst that can selectively activate a stronger bond in the presence of a weaker bond, or the development of a catalyst support material that can direct the course of a chemical transformation would enable more straight-forward synthetic routes to important commodity products.
www.neumannlab.science

Lise Meitner Group Galactic nuclei
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany
Nadine Neumayer and her research group are investigating the role black holes play in the evolution of galaxies. At what point in the development of a galaxy and under what conditions is a massive black hole formed? Do all galaxies have a central black hole? To answer these questions, she systematically studies those galaxies that are still in an early stage of development. The findings provide insights into how galaxies evolve and how matter is distributed in the universe. more