Theo Geisel
		Director, Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization and Professor of Theoretical Physics, University of Göttingen
		How do the myriads of neurons in our cortex cooperate when we perceive an object or perform another task? Are there statistical principles underlying human travel and can they be used to forecast the geographic spreading of modern epidemics? Questions like these address the complex dynamics of spatially extended or multicomponent nonlinear systems, which still reserve many surprises. In large networks of firing neurons, e.g., we found unstable attractors, a phenomenon which would neither have been guessed nor understood without mathematical modelling and which many physicists consider an oxymoron. The tools and mathematical methods developed in studies of chaotic behaviour in the past can now help us clarify the dynamics and function of complex networks and spatially extended systems and reveal the biological or physical role of dynamical phenomena like e.g. unstable attractors.

Research

Selected Publications

Department

BCCN Göttingen

Address
	Mail Address:	Bunsenstrasse 10 37073 Göttingen Germany
	Office:	Building 2, Room 02405
	Phone:	+49-(0)551-5176-400
	Email:	geisel [at] nld.ds.mpg.de

Curriculum Vitae
	Studies of Physics:	Universities of Frankfurt and Regensburg
	Dr. rer. nat. and Dr. habil.:	University of Regensburg
	Post-Doc.:	Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
	1988-1989:	Professor of Theoretical Physics, University of Würzburg
	1989-1996:	Professor of Theoretical Physics, University of Frankfurt (Chairperson of the SFB Nonlinear Dynamics)
	since 1996	Professor of Theoretical Physics, University of Göttingen and Director, Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization
	since 2005	Founder and Chairperson, Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience (BCCN) Göttingen

Awards and Fellowships
	Heisenberg Fellow (DFG, 1983)
	Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (DFG, 1994)
	Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS, 2008)
	Gentner-Kastler Prize (Société Française de Physique and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, 2009)