We're looking for a postdoc to strengthen our group! Please apply by January 15, 2026 if you're a fun and motivated person who likes theoretical modeling of biological processes by combining analytics and numerics. There is freedom in choosing projects! Details: www.ds.mpg.de/4110032/job_...

Since more than a decade, our group has been exploring chemically active droplets, which are exciting since their size can be controlled. Yet, we still do not fully understand this control even in the simplest models. Until a new preprint (arxiv.org/abs/2512.02542) spearheaded by postdoc Guido...

📢 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)

Two more pre-prints from the group 🎉 Riccardo explored how cells could control surface condensates by regulating bulk exchange (arxiv.org/abs/2511.03619). Filipe studied the impact of non-local interactions onto phase separation (arxiv.org/abs/2511.05214). Some more details in the thread:

Our review on the physics of phase separation in cells has been published by Rep. Prog. Phys. 🎉 doi.org/10.1088/1361... We hope that the text and citations are helpful for anyone interested in physical descriptions of condensates in cells!

Another pre-print from our group see's the light of day! 🎉 This time we how the coarsening of droplets is affected by advection and reactions: arxiv.org/abs/2510.00827 @stefankoestler2025.bsky.social describes our surprising findings in the thread below ⤵️

Our latest work from a stimulating collaboration with @jerelleaj.bsky.social and @nathanieldhess.bsky.social is out now!

A great example of a totally unplanned discovery in our group, spearheaded by a Bachelor and a PhD student! Curiosity wins 🥳

New preprint 🎉 What began as Frieder Johannsen’s bachelor thesis in the @zwickergroup.bsky.social (which I had the pleasure to supervise) evolved into our latest paper: “Chemically Active Liquid Bridges Generate Repulsive Forces” — unlike passive ones, which attract. 📄 arxiv.org/abs/2509.18777

It was fun to do a little interview and think about the relevance of our work for a more experimental and engineering inclined community.

We have developed a new workflow to map whole human organs at single-cell resolution, while integrating spatial transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. We applied this workflow to map precancerous lesions of the fallopian tubes. More here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

In other news, we welcome Mengmeng Wu 🇨🇳 and Lukas Kristensen 🇩🇰 to our group! 🥳 Mengmeng is a postdoc who will combine particle-based simulations with analytical theory to study chemically active droplets. Lukas visits us for three months and will work on anchored active droplets. Welcome aboard! 🎉

We were exceptionally effective at finishing manuscripts in the last weeks and couldn't keep up with describing pre-prints here. This thread summarizes the main results of our recent works:

This is a great opportunity to start an independent group in one of the best research environments you could think of!

Interested in doing a PhD in my group? I have an opening for a PhD student to work on understanding and designing nanomedicine-membrane interactions! Apply here: careers.universiteitleiden.nl/job/Leiden-P...

Looking forward to discussing our little active droplet theories with students!

Join my team for a PhD in Learning in living adaptive networks (Theory). Apply by October 7th through www.portal.graduatecenter.lmu.de/ocgc/qmb

It was a lot of fun to write this little piece on using phase transitions to process cellular information! We probably pose more questions than we give answers, but that’s exciting.

Our institute turned 100 years today! We had a fantastic celebration with scientific talks by Howard Stone and Christina Marchetti. 🎉

This workshop was just exceptional! Thanks to everyone for making it such a success

Took us until the end of Week 5 to take a group picture 🤦‍♀️, so we're missing a number of key participants. But what a wonderful group of thoughtful and creative people to talk science with! Thanks for joining us at #KITP! 🤓

Glad to see our paper out in press! The long delay to publication emphasizes the role of pre-prints, and I'm happy that people were able to read about our ideas years before they appear in a journal.

It's sad that our conference on biomolecular condensates is already over. On the flip side, you can watch almost all talks online to relive the stimulating vibe! Thanks again to all speakers for delivering clear talks, and to the audience for asking great questions!

Our conference bringing together theorists and experimentalists to discuss biomolecular condensates started today! Looking forward to three intensive days of stimulating discussion.

@jerelleaj.bsky.social, master painter 👩🏽‍🎨 of the blackboard 👩🏽‍🏫, in action! 🤩 She is amazing at capturing the essence of our complex, meandering (and sometimes contentious) discussions @kitp-ucsb.bsky.social

This was an excellent blackboard presentation of the physics of condensates!

Shura Grosberg (NYU) gives a fantastic blackboard talk @kitp-ucsb.bsky.social on liquid-liquid phase separation in and out of equilibrium 👨‍🏫

It’s been a lot of fun talking about chemically active condensates to such an attentive and motivated crowd!

We updated our pre-print on equilibria in multicomponent mixtures: arxiv.org/abs/2405.01138 In particular, we added the figure below, which shows that such mixtures exhibit countless metastable states between a metastable homogeneous state and the equilibrium with many phases.

Biomolecular condensates are critical for organizing cellular contents, but most studies focus on phase separation driven by salt, pH, or temperature. But what if intracellular movement also matters? Here, we explore motility-induced condensation in the cell. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We are so looking forward to the discussions (at the beach?) in Santa Barbara!

The four days of "Theory and concepts in biology" finish with a round table discussion on biology's biggest challenges. Some common themes emerged: how to deal with biological complexity? How to understand levels of organization? Which features make life unique? #EESTCBio @events.embl.org

Looking forward to an exciting meeting on "Theory and Concepts in Biology" at EMBL this week! #EESTCBio

Join our interdisciplinary team developing computational approaches to understand and engineer biomolecular condensates. We’re looking for a postdoc—please apply or share with interested persons! 👩🏽‍💻💧🧬 puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...

Next week, it is time for another Matter to Life lecture! MtL Fellow Andreas Janshoff from the University of Göttingen will speak about “The role of polarity in tissue mechanics”. Register here: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Yong Han Phee joined our group today! He's a #mattertolife student and will do an internship for this semester. Welcome aboard 🎉

Registration has started for the conference "Emerging Trends in the Physics of the Cell" in memoriam of Erich Sackmann at TU Munich from October 15-18 2025 www.cpa.tum.de/cpa/conferen...

We may not have really squared the circle — but we came close! 😉 In our @NaturePhysics paper w/ @fakhrilab.bsky.social, light-triggered membrane excitability enables programmable shapes — a step toward engineering living matter. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #biophysics #syntheticcell #softmatter

How are single-molecule dynamics influenced by phase separation? What happens if these molecules undergo chemical reactions as they often do in biomolecular condensates? What if they are driven out of equilibrium? arxiv.org/abs/2503.19517 @larshubatsch.bsky.social @mpipks.bsky.social

There's one week left to submit an application to be a #postdoc in our group! The project is very flexible, so there is room for own ideas. The advertisement lists more details: www.ds.mpg.de/4078435/job_...

I am looking forward to tell you about my research at #DPG. Come by my poster on wednesday to learn how coarsening of active droplets can be controlled by active reactions!

Excited for the #DPG meeting in Regensburg this week! Our group has a number of contributions across various sections. We look forward to discuss our science with you!

This summer in beautiful Santa Barbara we will run a 3-day conference on “Biological Physics of Biomolecular Condensates: Bridging Theory and Experiment” June 16 to 18th. Register now: www.kitp.ucsb.edu/activities/b...

We published a paper on our #opensource `flory` python package @joss-openjournals.bsky.social: joss.theoj.org/papers/10.21... The package allows us to detect coexisting phases in multicomponent mixtures in various relevant cases; see documentation at flory.readthedocs.io.

We have an open postdoc position in our group! We seek motivated and fun people with a background in theoretical biological physics to work on projects revolving around pattern formation, cell biology, and particularly #condensates. Details: www.ds.mpg.de/4078435/job_... #TheoBiophysicsPosition

"We often fail, which is why it's so important to keep going" - The essence of scientific research got me on the cover of GEO.

We published a one-page article in Nat. Chem. Eng. on phase separation in multicomponent mixtures: rdcu.be/ea4Ts The article exposes our latest results, which indicate such mixtures are generically multistable and imply that states with various different droplets (or none at all) are all stable.

We released the first version of our Python package `py-pde` five years ago. We heavily use this package to investigate partial differential equations numerically. The documentation at py-pde.readthedocs.io shows how to use the package, e.g., to solve the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation:

We wrote a review on the "Physics of droplet regulation in biological cells": arxiv.org/abs/2501.13639 Beside the basic #physics of phase separation, we discuss three aspects that separate cellular from traditional droplets:

"Mysterious Blobs Found inside Cells Are Rewriting the Story of How Life Works" Exciting times ahead! www.scientificamerican.com/article/myst...