Mainz Materials Simulation Days (MMSD) 2025: Life-Like and Living Materials
Location: Mainz, Germany and Chicago, USA
Organisers
MMSD is a traditional biannual discussion meeting organized by the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research and the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. The topic of the 2025 meeting is “life-like and living matter”. We will discuss emerging phenomena in life-like materials, and challenges for modelling and simulating them.
This year we are experimenting with a new concept for the format of the event. The workshop will be co-hosted with CECAM-US-CENTRAL – the first US CECAM node housed at the University of Chicago – and the UChicago Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC). It will proceed simultaneously in Chicago and Mainz with the two sites linked via videoconferencing. Half of the talks will be delivered live at each site and livestreamed to the other. The concept is similar to a hybrid event, but all of the US speakers will gather in Chicago and all the European speakers in Mainz to gain the benefits of face-to-face interactions at a local level while avoiding the large carbon footprint of transatlantic travel. From a timing perspective, the conference will proceed each day approximately 8 am – 3 pm in Chicago and 1–10 pm in Mainz, and comprise a combination of invited talks, contributed talks, and live and virtual poster sessions.
The following invited speakers have confirmed their participation:
Mainz gathering:
- Tanniemola Liverpool (Bristol)
- Sarah Loos (Cambridge)
- Sophie Marbach (Paris)
- Alexander Mietke (Oxford)
- Davide Michieletto (Edinburgh)
- Andela Saric (IST Austria)
Chicago gathering:
- Jörn Dunkel (MIT)
- Andrew Ferguson (Chicago)
- Margaret Gardel (Chicago)
- Zhi-Feng Huang (Michigan)
- Eleni Katifori (UPenn)
- Vincenzo Vitelli (Chicago)
Call for Abstracts
Contributed talks and posters are welcome. Please submit an abstract of about 250 words by 30 April 2025 via the conference website. Due to the limited number of slots for contributed talks, an abstract submitted for a talk may also be accepted as a poster. Please indicate in the application if you want to be considered for a talk.
Participants from outside the EU or US are asked to indicate at which site you wish to participate. Non-invited participants joining in Mainz will be charged a conference fee of 200 €.
References
Camilo Aponte-Santamaria (Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies) - Organiser
Burkhard Duenweg (Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research) - Organiser
Friederike Schmid (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) - Organiser
Lukas Stelzl (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) - Organiser
Peter Virnau (Uni Mainz) - Organiser
Michael te Vrugt (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) - Organiser
United States
Andrew Ferguson (University of Chicago) - Organiser
Stuart Rowan (University of Chicago) - Organiser