Fridtjof Brauns joins the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (MPIPKS) and the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) as a new research group leader. With his group, “Living and Morphing Matter Theory,” he is interested in self-organization in living systems, how biology controls and harnesses physical instabilities, and how geometry emerges from genes during development. Addressing these questions, Fridtjof uses concepts and ideas from theoretical physics, dynamical systems, and geometry, working in close collaboration with experimentalists.

“Dresden has a very tight connection of experiments and theory, which made it a really attractive place for me,” says Fridtjof. “The Max Planck Society is a wonderful place to focus on science, and I think it's a real privilege to have that freedom. There are many research groups here that I would love to collaborate with in the future, and I'm really looking forward to exploring new research directions here.”

Fridtjof Brauns studied physics and theoretical and mathematical physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich. He also pursued his PhD at the LMU and went from there to the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California-Santa Barbara for a postdoc with Boris Shraiman and Cristina Marchetti, where he focused on questions in development, cell- and tissue mechanics as well as active matter.