An inspiring morning on the mathematics of Turing-like patterns in biological systems at the conference on „Patterning principles in biophysics“ at beautiful Beg Rohu. Great talks by Robert Endres and @physicsoflifelmu.bsky.social biopatterning.sciencesconf.org

Fever - friend or foe? Happy to announce our International Marsilius Academy Feel the Heat – Science and Histories of Fever 📅 20–25 September 2026 | Marsilius Kolleg, Heidelberg ⏰ Application deadline: 14 June 2026 👉 More information and application: lnkd.in/eEmXDYgZ

Now out in Physical Review X: Cell Bulging and Extrusion in a Three-Dimensional Bubbly Vertex Model for Curved Epithelial Sheets Full article: doi.org/10.1103/x82g... With @omdrozdowski.bsky.social, Büşra Kocameşe-Tamgacı, @kimboonekamp.bsky.social and @michaelboutros.bsky.social. Here a 🧶 1/n

Our publication on 3D models for drug discovery is out! In the primer, we discuss the role of organoid models in drug discovery and development. Full article: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @dkfz.bsky.social @uniheidelberg.bsky.social @hlsalliance.bsky.social @sfb1324.bsky.social

How can #diatoms move and turn so fast in their glass-like shells? A team at B CUBE led by Dr. Poulsen @nic-poulsen.bsky.social and Prof. Diez @stefandiezlab.bsky.social has cracked the code: they steer by shifting the contact point with the surface ⚙️ Read our news ➡️ tud.link/zc6u4q #CMCBnews

It was a real pleasure to write this review with the group of ‪@lendertgelens.bsky.social‬ on the temperature response of biological systems👍. There is so much to tell that it did not fit into one manuscript😉Read the thread below to learn more about the two parts of this review👇

The new "auditorium maximum" of @uniheidelberg.bsky.social was inaugurated today, donated by @klaus-tschira-stiftung.de. We are so lucky to now have this beautiful building right in the middle of the science campus Im Neuenheimer Feld😀

Researchers tracked individual diatoms—unicellular photosynthetic microalgae with rigid silica cell walls—as they glided along a surface using mobile adhesive strands that protrude through slits in their cell walls, known as raphes. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/3GnU50YFJwL

Diatom gliding motility is so amazing 🚀 Happy to be together with @lettermann.bsky.social part of this great collaboration 😀 Check out the website of this open access publication to learn how their movement can be fast and flexible at the same time. And to watch many more beautiful movies 😉

Friday afternoon and #DPG2026 is over. Like always, a great meeting, well-organized and highly interesting👍This time with France as a guest country and many high-profile speakers from Dresden. Looking forward to #DPG2027 at Regensburg😀

The annual spring meeting of the German Physical Society #DPG2026 took place this year at beautiful Dresden and we organized a biological physics focus session on ultrasound and #sonogenetics. Peter Yingxiao Wang and Raphael Wittkowski gave impressive overview talks on what this field can do 👍🙏

Just back from the annual meeting of the @dfg.de priority program #SPP2332 on "Physics of Parasitism", this time at the Robert Koch Institute at Berlin. So many great talks and discussions! Already looking forward to next year's meeting at Hamburg👍

📢Paper alert📢 Now out in @bmc.springernature.com with open access: our very cool collaboration with @chlandalab.bsky.social on FIB-milling designs for cryoET rdcu.be/e2nXE Here you can see different designs for the stress relief cuts for dual-axis tomography. Read the paper for more details😀

📢Job alert📢 @uniheidelberg.bsky.social has an opening for a full W3-position on “Modeling of Biological Processes” 😀👍 Here is the call tinyurl.com/3w9e9dtf and application deadline is March 15. The group would be located at the beautiful #BioQuant center right in the middle of Neuenheimer Feld.

(1/2) Our work with @freddyfrischknecht.bsky.social on the chirality of malaria parasites has found its home in the January issue of @natphys.nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Moreover, we are very happy that it comes with a news and views article 👍❤️😀

Very sad news…

Now out in @biophysj.bsky.social: our work on the rosettes that sometimes are formed by red blood cells infected by malaria parasites (iRBCs). Surprisingly, they do not marginate, as do white blood cells or "normal" iRBCs, and we explain why (because they are dynamic and effectively soft).

Wow, researchers from our #SFB1129 are implicated in the Science 2024 Breakthrough of the Year, because they showed that HIV-capsids are flexible and go through nuclear pores. The latest paper on Lenacapavir-induced capsid damage just came out in @embojournal.org link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Great news also for the Heidelberg life science community 👍

📢 Paper alert 📢 Chirality is known to be important for the movement of microorganisms and active matter. In our new paper out today in @natphys.nature.com, we show that chirality is used by malaria parasites to control their motion patterns: doi.org/10.1038/s415... Here comes a 🧵 ... (1/9)

I am happy to announce that my group has an opening for a funded PhD position to explore the intersection between mechanobiology and inflammation in the intestine. Please see the attached advertisement below. Thanks for circulating and forwarding! www.srcsb.uni-stuttgart.de/news/New-ope...

Finally out in #PRXLife: our theory on the effect of temperature on the completion time of large networks. Using graph theory, one can show that the Arrhenius plot is quadratic, in excellent agreement with experimental data from fly development. Read the open access paper here: go.aps.org/48brig2

Beautiful work, congrats to Moritz, Petr and team🙌

📣Announcing the 4th edition of the EMBL‑IBEC Conference on “Engineering Multicellular Systems”, taking place 11–13 March 2026 in Barcelona. Exploring organoids, mechanobiology, embryo models, organ-on-chip systems, multiomics and more. Abstracts open now! events.ibecbarcelona.eu/embl-ibec-co...

Now out in @biophysj.bsky.social with open access and for the special issue dedicated to Erich Sackmann: our model for mechanochemical signal propagation in cell layers. Led by Dennis Wörthmüller from @institutcurie.bsky.social and implemented with discontinuous Galerkin FEM. doi.org/10.1016/j.bp...

The WEH-workshop on „Emergent trends in physics of the cell“ in honor of the late Erich Sackmann is now in full swing at TU Munich. Great talks and an amazing line-up for poster flash talks.

Jochen Guck from MPI Erlangen has passed away on October 4 2025. He has left us far too soon. RIP, Jochen

Congrats Nedal @ndarif.bsky.social, Yannick, Freddy and coworkers to this beautiful project. Another great work from #SFB1129. Special congrats to first author Nedal who very recently defended his PhD at #EMBL.

A very inspiring day with great 45 min talks at the Ulm Biophysics Summer Symposium 2025, by Joachim Spatz, Jovica Ninkovic, Max Bi, @streichan.bsky.social, Sabrina Leslie and Joachim Rädler. Many thanks @serwanelab.bsky.social for the invitation and congratulations for the new position👍😀🚀

The #mattertolife fall days are a wonderful opportunity to connect to this vibrant community. This time at the @mpip-mainz.mpg.de with talks by the local hosts @graeterlab.bsky.social, @landfesterdept.bsky.social and @weilgroup.bsky.social. Thanks @mattertolife.bsky.social for bringing us here 👍😀🙏

Very attractive position at EMBL Heidelberg

The #25EngLife conference is over and it was great, including the talks by @sarawickstrom.bsky.social, @bladoux.bsky.social and @routierlab.bsky.social. Many thanks to @stefandiezlab.bsky.social and the other organizers🙏🏻

Great session with flash talks at #25EngLife. Here @lettermann.bsky.social presenting his work on malaria parasite motility.

📣 Now out in @physreve.bsky.social‬ as editors' suggestion: our theory on the role of different myosin II isoforms during cell migration. For standard parameters, A and B segregate to the front and the back, respectively. Yet for other parameter values, also oscillations are possible.

📣 Now out in @physreve.bsky.social‬ as editors' suggestion: our theory on the role of different myosin II isoforms during cell migration. For standard parameters, A and B segregate to the front and the back, respectively. Yet for other parameter values, also oscillations are possible.

Now out in ACS Infectious Diseases @pubs.acs.org: joint work from the Lanzer, Tanaka, Schwarz and Cavalcanti-Adam labs within #SFB1129 on the adhesion footprint of malaria-infected infected red blood cells. Read the open access paper here: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Few spots left on our @bcube-tud.bsky.social organised hashtag #Symposium: Engineering Life 2025: Origin and Function of Mechanical Forces in Biology ⚙️🧬 📆 September 1-3, 2025 📍 Steigenberger Hotel de Saxe, Dresden Register now (Deadline 31 July 2025): engineering-life-dresden.de

Opening for a professorship in multimodal imaging in the context of our cluster of excellence #3DMM2O. Here is the full advertisement with all details: tinyurl.com/2ksy2b2s

I love the concept and the design of the research magazine RUPERTO CAROLA. For the new edition on ACTIVE & PASSIVE, I contributed a piece on "active matter physics" (main text in German, but with a summary in English). Here you can download the PDF: heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/rup...

Very inspiring, but also sort of sad: last of the annual retreats of our wonderful #SFB1129 on pathogens, which just entered its 12th and last year. But there is also some good news: it will end in one year from now with an international conference that everyone will be able to attend👍😀

📣Book alert📣 Finally out with Cambridge University Press: the book by Udo Seifert on "Stochastic thermodynamics". It comprehensively covers many topics, from an introduction to statistical physics to many special subjects such as reaction networks and active particles. Highly recommended 👍👍👍

📢Conference alert📢 Only one week left to register for the Engineering Life 2025 Symposium at Dresden September 1-3. This year's edition focuses on the function of mechanical forces in biology. engineering-life-dresden.de

Upcoming interdisciplinary meeting: Cell Physics 2025 When? October 7-9, 2025 Where? Saarbruecken, Germany Relevant dates? Early-bird deadline: June 30, regular registration by August 31 Several opportunities for short-talks selected from abstracts More info at: cell-physics.uni-saarland.de

Amazing, five of the new ERC Advanced Grants go to Heidelberg, and four of them are physics-related. I also note the strong connections to our clusters of excellence @structures-hd.bsky.social (Michaela Mapelli, Wolfram Pernice) and @cluster3dmm2o.bsky.social (Jana Zaumseil, Wolfram Pernice)👍👍👍

Inspiring talk by Erwin Frey @physicsoflifelmu.bsky.social sky.social‬ in the Heidelberg physics colloquium yesterday. And a great introduction to their latest paper on Min oscillations in @natphys.nature.com https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-025-02878-w

For both #actin and #Plasmodium aficionados, an amazing discovery by Franziska Hentzschel and @freddyfrischknecht.bsky.social: the Arp2/3-complex also exists in Plasmodium and is essential for genome segregation during gametogenesis. Now out in @natmicrobiol.nature.com

Many thanks to the organizers for including some biophysics at the Gordon Research Conference on #Malaria at beautiful Barcelona. Many great talks, including the one by Filipa ​Rijo-Ferreira on circadian rhythms in Plasmodium sporozoites. Here the corresponding paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It was a real pleasure to explore the past and present of fever(s) together with my colleague Ulrich Schwarz from Biophysics yesterday! Thanks to the organisers from InterdisciPlenary Heidelberg for making this event happen!

Pre-announcing the EMBO/EMBL symposium "Mechanobiology Across the Tree of Life", Heidelberg, 9-12 June 2026. It is still very very far away, but save the date 🗓️. With Alba Diz-Munoz, @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social , Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social, Enrique Rojas. www.embl.org/about/info/c...

If you should happen to be at Heidelberg next Monday (April 28, 7.15 pm in the Old City): Stefanie Gänger @feverprojecthd.bsky.social and myself will speak on fever from the perspectives of history and physics, respectively. Looking forward to interdisciplinary and lively discussions!