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.

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.

The developing brain is prepared to see even before the eyes are opened for the first time: Certain patterns are predetermined in the wiring of neurons. However, it takes a few days of visual experience to restructure the networks so that a consistent visual impression is created. Researchers from FIAS published these findings in Nature Neuroscience together with colleagues from the Max Planck Florida Institute.

On 5 February 2025, Luciano Rezzolla, Senior Fellow at Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS), received the PRACE HPC Excellence Award 2024, which recognises groundbreaking research and scientific advances through the use of high-performance computing (HPC). Rezzolla and his team were involved in the first images of supermassive black holes and made their interpretation possible with the help of numerical simulations and the construction of a theoretical framework that is able to interpret them and extract physical information. The fascinating images were taken as part of the international collaboration on the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).

Tom Reichert, postdoc at FIAS, received the FAIR-GSI PhD Award 2024 on 28 January. In his doctoral thesis at Goethe University, Reichert investigated the collisions of heavy atomic nuclei at different energies. He used and developed theoretical transport simulations to understand matter under these extreme conditions.

We are used to consider the periodic planetary movements in our solar system as well-determined and eternal. Our categorisation of time is based on the movement of the earth around itself and around the sun. But what happens on a larger scale when we include other stars or even galaxies in our considerations and look at their overall interaction?

Is there only one optimal configuration an organism can reach during evolution? Is there a single formula that describes the trajectory towards the optimum? And can we ‘derive’ it in a purely theoretical fashion? A team of researchers, including scientists from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS), has answers. Their mathematical model forecasts the ideal body plan of a fruit fly’s early embryo, suggesting that evolution might had many optimal options at its disposal.

​Solveig Plomer from the statistics group of Gaby Schneider (Goethe University) defended her thesis in the end of 2024. Within the LOEWE Schwerpunkt CMMS - Multiscale Modelling in Life Sciences she researched the movement of cell organelles in cooperation with Theresa Ernst and Philipp Gebhart from the group of Molecular Cell Biology of Plants and defined a new model for the description of cell organelle movement as well as a test and change point detection algorithm for changes in the model parameters.

FIAS joined the withdrawal from ‘X’ platform: More than 60 German-speaking universities and research institutions made a statement and discontinued their activities on the X platform (formerly Twitter).

Researchers at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) use computer simulations to show how proteins facilitate the crossing of membranes. This can be an important path for drugs to penetrate into cells, a requirement for the treatment of tumours or autoimmune diseases.

‘Frank(l)y Science’ is the new format for science slams at the Eschborn K cultural centre in Frankfurt. On 18 January, on the initiative of FIAS PhD student Jonas Elpelt, such an event will take place in the local cinema for the first time.

Entrepreneur Stephan Georg Huber has been appointed as a new member of the FIAS Board of Trustees (Stiftungsrat). Over the next five years, he will help shape our independent scientific institution for basic theoretical research.

An Institute for theoretical research: what began 20 years ago as an abstract vision has proven its worth. At the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS), researchers from different disciplines work together to decipher complex systems. Funded by Goethe University as a foundation, FIAS forms a unique theoretical interface between research institutes and departments on the Riedberg campus.

On the evening of November 28th, the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) hosted a distinguished lecture exploring the intersection of modern pathology and artificial intelligence. Under the title "Precision Medicine and the Use of AI in Tissue Diagnostics," Prof. Dr. Wild and Dr. Flinner offered fascinating insights into the rapid developments within this ever-evolving medical field.

Megha Chakraborty gained her doctorate at Goethe University on 26 November. She uses deep learning as a tool to decode seismological data. Impressive publications and the award of the title „summa cum laude“ reflect her successful research.

The Scientific Director of FIAS, Eckhard Elsen, will be awarded the W. K. H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics 2025 by the American Physical Society (APS) together with Robert Klanner. The two particle physicists are being honoured for their pioneering work on the large particle accelerator HERA (Hadron-Electron Ring Facility) at DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron). Both scientists were professors at the University of Hamburg and conducted research together at DESY.

Dark Energy is a subset of energy that accelarates the expansion of our universe. A new research work at FIAS studies the impact of dark energy inside our galaxies. The research shows that in order to have stable galaxies the repulsion force of dark energy cannot exceed two orders of magnitde of the known value from cosmology. This study suggests that dark energy plays a role stronger than expected even in the closeby universe.

The FIAS PhD students embarked on a retreat to Marburg for four days in October. The exciting and rapidly growing field of digital twins was the focus of their trip.