Previous speakers

Season 2023/2024

• Sep 1: Giacomo Bartolucci (MPI PKS Dresden) – Challenges in the theory of condensate dynamics
• Sep 8: Benjamin Friedrich (TU Dresden) – Branching morphogenesis shaping silica patterns in diatom microalgae
• Sep 19: Krishnan Iyer (NCBS-TIFR) – Inference & Control in Distributed Cellular Systems: information and space, energy, time
• Sep 22: Louise Jawerth (Leiden Uni) – Fiber growth and glass-like aging: Two mechanisms through which protein condensates age
  
• Sep 27: Pierre Ronceray (CINAM Marseille) – From trajectories to models: data-driven approaches to decipher the dynamics of living systems
  
• Oct 5: Gautam Dey (EMBL) – Mitotic rewiring on evolutionary timescales
  
• Oct 18: Jonathan Ron (Weizmann Institute) – One-dimensional cell motility patterns
  
• Oct 20: Tom Brandstätter (VU Amsterdam and LMU Munich) – Data-driven theory reveals universal cell-cell interactions across distinct motile cells
  
• Nov 3: Roberto Moran Tovar (University of Cologne) – Real-time immune recognition in a primary infection
  
• Nov 9: Silke Henkes (Leiden Uni) – Generating active T1 transitions and convergence-extension flows through mechanochemical feedback
  
• Nov 17: Dillon Cislo (Rockefeller Uni) – Geometric Methods for Cell Fate Transitions, Tissue Patterning, and Morphogenesis
• Nov 24: Mijo Simunovic (Columbia Uni) – Embryomimetics: dissecting the mechanisms of early human development with experimental stem cell models of the embryo
  
• Nov 30: Manuel Reinhardt (AMOLF) – Decoding the information stored in stochastic temporal dynamics, in biology and beyond
• Dec 7: Aryeh Warmflash (Rice Uni) – Self-organizing stem cell systems to study early human development
  
• Dec 15: Timothy Fuqua (Uni Zurich) – Mutating non-regulatory DNA to learn how new gene regulation evolves
• Jan 19: Paul Robin (Hannezo group) – Ion channels: a physicist bird’s view from biology to artificial iontronics
• Jan 26: Natalia Ruzickova (Tkačik group) – Towards interpretable genomic predictions: Effect propagation through gene regulatory networks
• Feb 9: Suyash Naik (Hannezo and Heisenberg groups) – Rheostatic reinforcement by keratin intermediate filaments promote Zebrafish epithelial spreading
• Feb 21: Patricia Bassereau (Institute Curie) – Cellular Protrusions: in vitro and in cellulo
• Mar 1: Francois Nedelec (Sainsbury Laboratory) – Simple Chromosome Partitioning Mechanisms and a Mitotic Spindle
  
• Mar 8: Pieter Rein ten Wolde (AMOLF) – Costs and benefits of information in cellular prediction
  
• Mar 15: Janni Harju (VU Amsterdam) – Bacterial chromosome segregation: why entropy isn’t enough, and how loop-extrusion can help
• Apr 5: Debayan Chakraborty (Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai) – Understanding amyloid aggregation from the perspective of the monomer conformational ensemble
• Apr 19: Anton Goloborodko (Vienna Biocenter) – Sister chromatid cohesion is asymmetrically misaligned
• Apr 26: David Brückner (Hannezo and Tkačik groups) – Positional information and gene regulatory logic in human gastrulation
• May 3: Ricard Alert (MPI-PKS) – Directed motion in active matter: Frictiotaxis and flocking
• May 17: Justin Crocker (EMBL) – Understanding Fruit Flies in Context: Evolution, Toxins, and Behavior
• May 24: Ekaterina Krasnopeeva (Guet group) – Glass transition in E. coli cytoplasm
• Jun 7: Maria Tătulea-Codrean (University of Cambridge) – Mathematical models for biological cooperation: lessons from bacteria
• Jun 14: Frederic Bertels (MPI) – Bacterial genomic parasites and mutualists
• Jun 21: Maitane Muñoz-Basagoiti (Šarić group) – Dynamics and deformations of chemically active membranes
• Jul 5: Alexis Bénichou (Institut Pasteur) – Compression-based inference of network motif sets
• Jul 12: Merlin Lange (Chan Zuckerberg Biohub) – Building a Multimodal Atlas of Vertebrate Development

Season 2022/2023

• Sep 23: Kseniia Khudiakova (Barton group) – Multidimensional diffusion approximation and rugged fitness landscapes
• Sep 30: Christoph Weber (Augsburg University) – Interplay of phase separation and molecular assembly
• Oct 07: Jake Yeung (Scientific computing) – Disentangling the effects of sleep and time-of-day on gene regulation dynamics in the cortex
• Oct 14: Somya Mani (IBS-CSLM) – Development is not tree-like: Boolean modelling of development indicates plasticity in cell states
• Oct 21: Mindy Liu (EMBL Heidelberg) – Networked dynamical systems approaches to quantitatively predict multicellular gene expression patterning
• Nov 04: David Sprinzak (Tel Aviv University) – Coordination between mechanical forces and signaling drive precise patterning in the inner ear
• Nov 11: Ruben Perez-Carrasco (Imperial College London) – A dynamical systems approach to design function of Gene Regulatory Networks
• Nov 18: Timothy Saunders (University of Warwick) – Building a morphogen gradient from source to sink
• Nov 25: Stefanie Rus (Kicheva group) and David Brückner (Hannezo and Tkačik groups) – Self-organized cell fate transitions in the vertebrate dorsal neural tube
• Dec 02: Alberto Pezzotta (University College London) – An optimal control approach to timely and accurate cell-fate decisions and morphogen patterning
• Dec 16: Matthew Turner (Warwick University) and Simon Schnyder (University of Tokyo) – Role of the cell cycle in collective cell dynamics
• Jan 13: Fridtjof Brauns (KITP Santa Barbara) – Epithelial geometry bridges cell and tissue scale dynamics during convergent extension
• Jan 20: Demian Levis (University of Barcelona) – Dense Disordered Active Matter
• Jan 27: Neza Vadnjal (University of Cambridge) – Molecular control of actin cortex architecture during cell division
• Feb 03: Imre Derenyi (Eötvös University) – Somatic Evolution: How Multicellular Organisms Can Live Long
• Feb 10: Reka Körei (Tkačik group) – Optimal regimes of regulatory sequence evolution
• Feb 17: Fabrizio Lombardi and Abir George (Tkačik group) – Emergence of stable patterns in an out-of-equilibrium Ising model with local feedback
• Feb 24: Steffen Werner (Wageningen University) – Worms through the eyes of a physicist:
  From self-organized body patterning to phase transitions in gene expression data
• Mar 10: Julian Stopp (Sixt group) – Run and Fumble: How Eukaryotes Learned from Bacteria
• Mar 17: Krishnan Iyer (NCBS Bangalore) – Cell-autonomous Control mediated Positional Inference during Development in Distributed Cellular Systems
• Mar 24: Ben Zoller (Institut Pasteur / Princeton) – Common bursting relationships underly transcription dynamics in developmental genes: towards general rules?
• Apr 14: Cornelia Schwayer (FMI Basel) – Cellular states modulate symmetry breaking in intestinal regeneration
• Apr 28: Simon Rella (Tkačik and Kondrashov groups) – Directing Pathogen Evolution with a Mosaic of Vaccines
• May 12: Michal Hledik (Barton and Tkačik groups) – Trade-off between fitness and entropy in regulatory sequences
• May 26: Fabrizio Olmeda (Hannezo group) – Renormalization group approach to biological systems
• Jun 16: Nikhil Mishra (Heisenberg group) – Cell cleavage synchrony in embryonic development
• Jun 23: Lorenzo Talamanca (ETH Zürich) – Sex-dimorphic and age-dependent organization of 24-hour gene expression rhythms in humans
• Jun 30: Irene Li (Hannezo group) – Emergent phase waves in biological oscillators

Season 2021/2022

• Oct 08: Luis Gómez-Nava (Humboldt University of Berlin) – Intermittent individual and collective behavior in biological systems across scales
  
• Oct 15: Justin Crocker (European Molecular Biology Laboratory Heidelberg) – Multidimensional approach to decoding the mysteries of animal development
• Oct 22: David Brückner (Hannezo and Tkačik Groups) – Curvature induces active matter velocity waves in rotating multicellular spheroids
• Oct 29: Jeremy Gunawardena (Harvard University) – Information processing away from thermodynamic equilibrium
  
• Nov 05: Roderich Römhild (Guet Group) – The evolution of drug interaction patterns
• Nov 12: Nick Barton (Barton Group) – Adaptation in an infinitesimal world
• Nov 19: Ekaterina Krasnopeeva (Guet Group) – Glass transition in E. coli cytoplasm
• Dec 17: Zena Hadjivasiliou (The Francis Crick Institute and University College London) – Control of size and patterns across biological scales
  
• Jan 28: Francis Corson (Laboratoire de Physique de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, CNRS, Paris) – Mechanics of embryonic self-organization
  
• Feb 04: Galien Grosjean (Waitukaitis Group) – Triboelectrification: a little water goes a long way
• Feb 18: Diana Pinheiro (Heisenberg Group) – Turning gradients inside out: Morphogen gradient orchestrates pattern-preserving morphogenesis via motility-driven (un)jamming
• Mar 04: Edouard Hannezo (Hannezo Group) – Forces in biology across scales
  
• Mar 18: Gašper Tkačik (Tkačik Group) – Some biophysical mysteries in eukaryotic transcriptional regulation
• Mar 25: Anđela Šarić (Šarić Group) – One becomes two: proteins assemblies that split cells across evolution
• Apr 01: Luca Giorgetti (Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Basel) – Towards a quantitative understanding of long-range transcriptional regulation
  
• Apr 22: Louisa Gonzalez Somermeyer (Kondrashov Group)
• Apr 29: Hermann Cuntz (Ernst Strüngmann Institute Frankfurt)
• May 13: Srđan Sarikas (Medizinische Universität Wien)
• May 20: Jaime Agudo-Canalejo (Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization)
• Jun 03: Anna Erzberger (European Molecular Biology Laboratory Heidelberg)
• Jun 10: Sreyam Sengupta (Hannezo and Tkacik Groups) – Optimality in cell state dynamics
• Jun 24: Nicolas Ecker (Collège de France)

Season 2020/2021

• Nov 6: Gašper Tkačik (Tkačik Group) – Collective behavior of pancreatic beta cells
• Nov 13: Sebastian Fürthauer (Center for Computational Biology, Flatiron Institute) – The physics of highly crosslinked cytoskeletal networks
• Nov 20: Feyza Nur Arslan (Heisenberg Group)
• Nov 27: Stephan Uphoff (University of Oxford) – DNA repair and mutagenesis in bacteria: resolving dynamics and cellular heterogeneity using single-molecule imaging
• Dec 4: Wiktor Młynarski (Tkačik Group) – What is the “function” of sensory systems? The case of spatial hearing
• Dec 11: Zuzana Dunajová (Hannezo Group) – Simulating collective-single transition in confined cell migration
• Jan 15: Thomas Gregor (Princeton University)
• Jan 22: M. Lisa Manning (Syracuse University) – What are the mechanisms that drive arrest of cell motion in confluent biological tissues?
• Jan 29: Mike Hennessey (Guet and Hof Groups)
• Feb 5: Michael Riedl (Hof and Sixt Groups)
• Feb 12: Fabrizio Lombardi (Tkačik Group)
• Feb 19: Daniel Boocock (Hannezo Group)
• Feb 26: Fernanda Pinheiro (University of Cologne)
• Mar 5: Claire Amadio-Dessalles (École Polytechnique and LadHyX)
• Mar 12: Kasumi Kishi (Hannezo and Kicheva Groups)
• Mar 19: Bernat Corominas-Murtra (Hannezo Group)
• Mar 26: Wolfgang Keil (Institut Curie)
• Apr 9: Christoph Zechner (Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics)
• Apr 16: Carles Blanch-Mercader (Université de Genève)
• Apr 23: Jan Philipp Junker (Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin) – Cellular drivers of injury response and regeneration in the zebrafish heart
• Apr 30: Tapomoy Bhattacharjee (Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University)
• May 21: Michal Hledík (Barton and Tkačik Groups)
• May 28: Peter Swain (Centre for Synthetic and Systems Biology, University of Edinburgh)
• June 11: Jeremy Gunawardena (Blavatnik Institute of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School)

Spring and Summer 2020 (Note: this list contains some scheduled speakers whose talks were later cancelled because of COVID restrictions)

• Jan 17: Jens Elgeti (Forschungszentrum Jülich) – Minimal physical modeling of living systems
• Jan 24: Daan Groot and Age Tjalma (University of Amsterdam) – Elementary approaches to growth rate maximization
• Feb 21: Jeroen van Zon (AMOLF, Amsterdam) – Maintaining form and function in the face of random variability
• Mar 6: Alex Fletcher (University of Sheffield)
• Mar 13: Daniel Boocock (Hannezo Group)
• Mar 20: Wolfgang Keil (Institut Curie)
• Mar 27: Nicoletta Petridou (Heisenberg Group)
• Apr 3: Bernat Corominas-Murtra (Hannezo Group)
• Apr 17: Moritz Kreysing (MPI-CBG Dresden)
• Apr 24: Jan Philipp Junker (MDC Berlin)
• May 29: Jaime Agudo-Canalejo (MPI Göttingen)
• June 23: Naama Barkai (Weizmann Institute)

• Oct 18: Yiteng Dang (TU Delft) – Collective dynamics in systems of communicating secrete-and-sense cells
• Oct 25: Oleksandr Ostrenko (Hannezo and Heisenberg Groups) – Mathematical Modeling of Transport Processes in the Liver: Bile Flow and Vesicular Trafficking
• Nov 8: Christoph Flamm (University of Vienna) – Discovering Reaction Patterns in Chemical Reaction Networks
• Nov 22: Mehmet Can Ucar (Hannezo Group) – Collective force generation by molecular motors deduced from single-molecule properties
• Nov 29: Diana Fusco (University of Cambridge) – The role of spatial constraints in evolution: insights from microbes and phage
• Dec 6: Nick Jones (Imperial College, London) – Stochastic Survival of the Densest and Invasion Waves of Disadvantaged Mutations In Muscle Ageing
• Dec 13: Michal Komorowski (IPPT PAN, Warsaw) – Making sense of signaling complexity

Spring 2019

• March 1:  Georgia Squyres (Harvard University) – The role and regulation of FtsZ dynamics in bacterial cytokinesis
• March 18: Chase Broedersz (LMU Munich) – Dynamics of Confined Cell Migration
• March 22: Bor Kavcic (Tkacik Group) – Perturbations of protein synthesis — from antibiotics to genetics and physiology
• March 25: Bart Smeets (KU Leuven) – Tissue structure and dynamics from active cell mechanical properties Theory and computational models
• April 5: Suyash Naik (Hannezo and Heisenberg groups) – Tissue mechanics of a somersault
• April 12: Trevor  Graham (Barts Cancer Institute QMUL) – Measuring evolutionary dynamics of human cancers from genomic data
• April 15: Mike Springer (Harvard Medical School) – How and why cells decouple the decisions of whether and how strongly to express a gene
• April 18: Rudolf Hanel (MedUni Vienna) – Caught in the act: Elements of an Emerging Theory of Complex Adaptive Processes and their Applications
• April 26: Aditya Gilra (Tkacik Group) – Biologically-plausible learning in neural networks for movement control and cognitive tasks
• May 3: David Wolpert (Santa Fe Institute) – Fundamental limits on the thermodynamics of circuits
• May 10: Kathrin Tomasek (Guet Group) – How E. coli trick our immune system during UTIs
• May 17: Thomas Sokolowski (Tkacik Group) – Deriving the Drosophila gap gene system ab-initio from an optimization principle
• May 24: Shayan Shamipour (Heisenberg Group) – Phase Segregation in Zebrafish Oocytes
• June 7: Mantas Gabrielaitis (Tkacik Group) – Efficient coding at the first synapse in the auditory pathway
• June 14: Wiktor Mlynarski (Tkacik Group) – Adaptability and efficiency in neural coding
• July 19: Stefan Münster (MPI Dresden) – An integrin-mediated adhesion between embryonic tissue and vitelline membrane affects gastrulation of insects
• July 25: Dagmar Iber (ETH Zurich) – From Networks to Function: Computational Models of Organogenesis
• August 6: Nir Gov (Weizmann Institute) – The physics of cooperative transport in groups of ants

Fall 2018

Spring 2018

• March 1: Georg Pabst (University of Graz) – Physical insights on cell membrane function from complex mimetics
• March 9: Rok Grah (Guet and Tkacik Groups) – Can we have specificity without stable complexes?
• March 15: Peter Barancok (Comenius University in Bratislava) – Mathematical Model of Growth of Budding Yeast
• March 23: Roshan Prizak (Barton and Tkacik Groups) – Crosstalk results in improved estimates of ligand concentrations
• April 6: Nils Becker (University of Heidelberg) – Interferon codes in innate immunity / Hidden memory in cell-cycle times
• April 13: Gasper Tkacik – Can noise speed up evolutionary search for fit sequences?
• April 20: Thomas Jolou (University of Basel) – Revisiting diauxic growth: lessons from single-cell approaches
• April 27: Edouard Hannezo – Mechano-chemical descriptions of active gels
• May 4: Mike Hennessey (Hof Group) – Experimental droplet techniques for investigating codon survival probability
• May 18: Namiko Mitarai (University of Copenhagen) – Phage vs. Bacteria: The art of war among the unseen majority
• May 25: Marcin Zagorzski (Kicheva Group) – Source and target driven patterning in the developing spinal cord
• June 8: Magdalena Steinrueck (Guet Group) – What makes a bacterial promoter? Observations from walks through random sequence space
• June 18: Steffen Rulands (MPI Dresden) – Understanding cell fate regulation: from molecules to tissues

Fall 2017

• Sept 22: Bor (Tkacik group) – The translation stage-specific effects on antibiotic susceptibility
• Sept 29: Anna A (Tkacik and Guet Group) – Uneven partitioning, a structured population, and the question of whether it can bee seen?
• Oct 5: Remy (Guet Group) – Shaping bacterial population behavior through computer-interfaced control of individual cells
• Oct 13: Paulo (Loose Group) – Modulation of Z-ring Assembly by Bacterial Crosslinkers
• Oct 19: Claudia (Guet Group) – Crosstalk between temperate phages
• Nov 3: Kathrin (Guet Group)- Phase variation as a mechanism to establish recurrent (urinary tract) infections?
• Nov 10: Sarah (Tkacik group) – Information estimation for dynamic, single-cell signals
• Nov 17: Urban (Loose Group) – Rebuilding Rab5 activation in vitro
• Nov 24: Maria (Friml and Seikhaus Group) – Plant root growth inhibition by auxin: the role of auxin transport
• Dec 1: Srdjan (Barton and Guet Group) – Predicting the expression of a promotor sequence using 1) convolutional neural networks and 2) biophysical models.

Spring 2017

• March 3: Claudia (Bollback and Guet group) – Does E. coli have a good or a bad memory?
• March 10: Katka (Tkacik and Barton group) – Inference of probabilistic models of animal behavior
• March 17: Marta (Bollenbach group) – Modulating the evolvability of antibiotic resistance
• March 24: Anna (Guet group) – Comprehensive shuffling of relative gene order as a source of phenotypic diversity
• March 31: Gasper (Tkacik group) – Information in a genetic network is optimally decoded to establish unique cell identities
• April 7: Bor (Bollenbach and Tkacik group)  – Predicting bacterial growth in response to antibiotic combinations using growth laws 
• April 21: Daniele (Tkacik group) – Statistical mechanics of metabolic networks
• April 28: Urban (Loose group) – Rebuilding a signaling cascade from bottom up
• May 5: Roshan (Tkacik group) – Evolution of new regulatory functions on biophysically realistic fitness landscapes
• May 26: Natalia (Loose group) Reconstitution of bacterial cell wall synthesis
• June 2: Thomas (Tkacik group) – Using eGFRD for particle-based stochastic simulation of simple synthetic promoter architectures
• June 9: Bella and Rok (Guet group) – Gene amplification as a primitive means of gene regulation

Fall 2016

• September 16: Qi Qin (Bollenbach group) – Dissecting the molecular basis of interactions between trimethoprim and two macrolide drugs
• September 22: Jakob (Henzinger/Tkacik group) – A stochastic modeling perspective of bacterial restriction modification systems
• September 30: Nela (Guet group) – Activation of the MazF toxin promotes growth heterogeneity between single bacterial cells
• October 6: Pavel (Barton/Bollback group) – The dynamics of CRISPR-based herd immunity in phage-bacterial communities
• October 13: Matthias (Cremer group) – Viral diversity in ant communities
• October 21: Maros (Guet group) – Temperate bacteriophages meet restriction-modification systems: The pioneers of Molecular Biology in an ecological context
• October 28: Sarah (Tkacik group) – Estimating information jointly carried by multiple intracellular signals at a temporally-resolved, single-cell level 
• November 11: Srdjan and Mato (Barton and Guet group) – Context Dependence in RNA Polymerase Binding
• November 18: Andreas (Bollenbach group) – A growth-dependent negative feedback loop lowers the sensitivity to antibiotics
• November 25: Magdalena (Guet group) – Genetic basis of chromosomal neighborhood effects on adaptive evolution of gene expression
• December 2: Moritz (Guet group) – When being perfect is not good enough: Adaptation, Invariance, Internal Models and Differentiation
• December 16: Fabienne (Bollback group) – The lac operon in the wild, part II: A natural genotype-phenotype map

Spring 2016

• March 4: Tobias (Guet group) – Asymmetry in bacteria: concepts, mechanisms and consequences
• March 11: Fabienne (Bollback group) – Tales from the wild: uncovering the structure of a natural genotype-phenotype map
• March 18: Tamar and Roshan (Barton and Tkacik group) – An evolutionary-biophysical model of subfunctionalization in gene regulation
• April 1: Isabella (Guet group) – Amplifications as a crude means of gene regulation?
• April 8: Anna K. (Kicheva group)
• April 15: Jakob (Henzinger/Tkacik group)
• April 22: Marcin (Bollenbach group)
• May 13: Martin (Bollenbach group)
• May 31: Veronika (Bollenbach group)
• Jun 10: Hande (Bollback group)

Fall 2015

• October 16: Marta, Sebastian, Tiago (Bollenbach and Barton group) – Stress-induced mutagenesis: The more diverse the challenges, the better for the mutator.
• October 23: Anna A. (Guet group) – Reiteration no. 1 of a model of asymmetric division at cell division
• October 30: Gasper (Tkacik group) – Beyond the French Flag
• November 06: Karin (Bollenbach group) – Cause and physiological relevance of acid stress induction by Trimethoprim in bacteria
• November 13: Tomek (Tkacik group) – Constructing a predictive spatial-stochastic model of early embryogenesis
• November 20: Moges Kibret – Antibiotics in the wild
• November 27: Stefan Klumpp (U Göttingen), QSB seminar
• December 04: Katka (Tkacik group) – How quantitative traits follow entropy maximization principle
• December 10: Karsten Kruse (U Saarland), QSB seminar
• December 18: Lenka (Uhler group) – Inferring causality in gene expression
• January 15: Georg (Tkacik group) – Biophysical constraints and the evolution of gene expression
• January 29: Murat (Barton group) – Biophysical and evolutionary characteristics of RNA polymerase binding in E. coli
• February 05: Sarah (Tkacik group) – Estimation of mutual information from pulsatile dynamics in yeast

Spring 2015

• February 13: Anna Staron (Guet group)
• February 27: Nick Barton (Barton group)
• March 6: Tamar Friedlander (Barton group)
• March 13: Maros Pleska (Guet group)
• June 5: Fabienne Jesse (Bollback group)
• July 3: Marjon (Bollenbach group)
• July 10: Georg (Tkacik group)

Fall 2014

• September 11: Murat (Barton group)
• September 26: Gasper (Tkacik group)
• October 24: Mateusz (Heisenberg group)

Spring 2014

• February 06: Georg (Tkacik group)
• February 21: Tamar (Barton group)
• February 28: Martin (Graduate school)
• March 21: Guillaume (Bollenbach group)
• March 28: Maros (Guet group)
• April 04: Pavel (Bollback group)
• April 25: Karin (Bollenbach group)
• June 27: Isa (Bollback group)
• July 04: Marjon (Bollenbach group)