Prof. Dr.-Ing. Kai Sundmacher has been appointed as Fellow of the Max Planck School Matter to Life

June 06, 2019

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Kai Sundmacher, director at the Max Planck-Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems in Magdeburg, has been appointed as Fellow of the Max Planck School Matter to Life by the President of the Max Planck Society. In this role, Prof. Sundmacher will offer and guarantee excellent individual mentoring of the students and will bring in his key knowledge and expertise in process systems engineering and in bottom-up synthetic biology.

“What, exactly, is life?", and "Can life-like processes, functions and objects be quantitatively simulated, predicted and created in the laboratory?" are the overarching questions addressed in the curriculum and research training of the doctoral program at the Max Planck School Matter to Life. It offers highly talented and motivated students a superior training in the fundamentals, methods and approaches in the rapidly developing research field of Matter to Life.

The Max Planck School Matter to Life is a joint initiative between Universities and research institutions all across Germany – from several institutes of the Max Planck Society, Heidelberg University, Göttingen University, the Technical University of Munich and the DWI-Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials in Aachen. Through in-person and online courses, workshops, and cutting-edge research, students will receive a top-notch training from over fifty established experts in the field of Matter to Life.

Joint project of universities and research institutions

The three, in 2018 established, Max Planck Schools (Cognition; Photonics, Matter to Life) are innovative, networks for doctoral training across different organizations and different locations in Germany aimed at attracting outstanding students worldwide. The successful candidates can devote their PhDs to new, interdisciplinary and forward-looking research questions in the field of basic and applied-oriented research.