For his great commitment to the Frankfurt International Graduate School for Science (FIGSS), FIAS Fellow Sebastian Thallmair received the Director's Award for Excellent Mentoring today. The award, endowed with 5,000 Euros, honors his innovative commitment to the graduate school.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) today approved 18 new Research Training Groups and extended ten others. These include the interdisciplinary Research Training Group on Imaging in the Life Sciences with FIAS participation.

On this wonderful summer evening, visitors were fascinated by the “Sight of Science” from the FIAS roof terrace as well as the hands-on experiments and the kicking robots. FIAS doctoral student Jonas Elpelt was the winner of the Goethe University Science Slam.

Nine FIAS runners took part in the J. P. Morgan Chase in Frankfurt - despite the bad weather. FIAS doctoral student Gianmarco was particularly successful: he achieved the eleventh best time - and 23rd place worldwide!

How the brain largely maintains its function when neurons are lost – this is what researchers at the Mainz University Medical Center, the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) and Hebrew University (Jerusalem) have deciphered. They show that neuronal networks in the cerebral cortex reorganize within a short period of time, with other nerve cells taking over the tasks of the lost neurons. These findings could form the basis for future research into natural ageing processes and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. The study was published in the renowned journal Nature Neuroscience.

A new method makes it possible to better understand the motions of molecules which is important for their function. Researchers at FIAS, together with a team from the Flatiron Institute in New York (USA), have developed a technique to evaluate electron microscope images faster and more reliably with the help of physics-based simulations and machine learning. In the future this will help us gain deeper understanding on how the body works.

Maren Wehrheim from the group of Matthias Kaschube successfully defended her doctoral thesis on May 26th. Between computer science, artificial intelligence (AI), and neuroscience she adressed three key challenges in understanding the interface between biological and artificial systems.

The SCALE (SubCellular Architecture of LifE) research network at Goethe University (GU) with the participation of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) will in future receive funding from the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments. The key technology - the “digital twin” - is located at FIAS. The TAM (The Adaptive Mind) network, led by the universities of Giessen, Marburg and Darmstadt with the participation of FIAS and GU, was also successful. Researchers at FIAS are developing computational models to better understand the brain's adaptation processes to everyday challenges.

On 8 May 2025, the Frankfurt International Graduate School for Science (FIGSS) welcomed Lidia Pieri, co-founder and CEO of Sibylla Biotech, to Campus Riedberg. A trained particle physicist, Lidia shared her journey from fundamental research to founding a biotech company.

A group led by FIAS Fellow Sebastian Thallmair is using a significantly improved method to optimize the calculation of protein structures. The international team has succeeded in describing the flexibility and mechanical properties of proteins more precisely.

On April 30, FIAS supporter Elisabeth Kleber died at the age of 94. The H. & E. Kleber Endowment Fund has been supporting interdisciplinary neuroscientific research projects at FIAS and Goethe University for 20 years.

The term of office of FIAS Director Eckhard Elsen ended on April 30. He was Scientific Director of the research institute for three years. In 2022 - as a result of a change to the Statutes - he replaced the previous management of the five-member Executive Board, including the Managing and Administrative Director, for three years.

24 students of the "Universität des 3. Lebensalters" (University of the Third Age, U3L) were guests at FIAS on April 17. They listened with great interest to the presentation by FIAS Fellow Franziska Matthäus on research at FIAS.

Felix Hoffmann defended his doctoral thesis on the novel useful work blockchain architecture gophy on April 17th 2025.

On 11 April 2025, Michael Alexander Ramírez Sierra successfully defended his doctoral thesis “Computational Studies on the Optimality of Early Embryonic Cellular Information Processing Strategies” under the guidance of FIAS Fellows Thomas R. Sokolowski and Franziska Matthäus as part of the Center for Multiscale Modelling in Life Sciences (CMMS) research initiative.

This year’s Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics has been awarded to the four major international collaborations at CERN – ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb. The prize recognizes groundbreaking discoveries about the fundamental structure of matter and the origins of the universe, including research into the quark-gluon plasma that existed shortly after the Big Bang. More than 1,000 scientists from around the world are involved in the ALICE experiment – among them, the research groups led by FIAS Fellows Volker Lindenstruth and Ivan Kisel.

From April 2 to 5, 2025, the STAR collaboration gathers at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) for a preparatory meeting with around 50 participants. The event sets the stage for the prestigious Quark Matter 2025 conference, taking place the following week at Goethe University.

This year, FIAS is once again taking part in the J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge - the world's largest corporate run with over 60,000 participants.

Our brains create highly individualized maps of the world around us. Not only does it represent complex relationships in language, for example, but even abstract sounds have different representations. This was shown by a team of scientists from FIAS together with colleagues from Mainz in a recent study. The "brain maps" for sounds and sentence structures are individual to each person and predict their creative abilities. This finding has implications for psychological research, the study of creativity in animals, and the study of artificial intelligence.

How do antibiotics penetrate bacteria? How do proteins interact with each other? And how can such biological processes be deciphered using modern computer simulations? One powerful simulation method helping to answer these questions is the Martini force field, which plays a key role in the study of (bio)molecular systems.