Research
Erwin Schrödinger mentioned already in 1944 that the living state of matter may need new laws. This new laws have not yet been found although a lot of progress was made in this direction. Reseacher like Manfred Eigen or Ilya Prigogine gave us some theoretical tools to better understand the formation of self-evolving and self-organizating systesms.
In our days a huge community of reseachers of very different fields are interested in understanding the behavior of complex systems as in sociology, economy, culture studies, biology, chemistry, electronics, robotics or physics.
In the complex systems society reseachers of these diverse fields find a common ground - it becomes more and more clear that the laws that are govering the different phenomenas in these different fields are very similar or even the same. Surly the languages with which these laws are written are different and appropriate to each fields. The aim is to find a cmmon language with which all these different phenomenas can be described.
With our research we want to contribute to better understand and moreover to reveil these common laws in different systems. Our reseach interest are complex systems that ranges from purely biological over chemical systems to swarms of robots.
Transient Chaos in a Chemical Oscillator
Deterministic chaos is a well defined theoretical property from a mathematical point of view. In this research we investigate the properties of deterministic chaos from an experimental point of view. Part of this research was carried out in collaboration with the Complexity and NonLinear Dynamics Group in Sassari, Sardegna (Italy).
Molecular Communication between Synthetic Compartments
Communication seems to be a key ingredient for the behavior of complex systems. In this research we investigated the possibility of the encapsulation of a chemical oscillator in artificial vesicles. This research was carried out in collaboration with Federico Rossi from the Dipartimento di Chimica e Biologia of the University of Salerno (Italy).
Self-Organization of a Dichloromethane Drop on a Surfactant Solution
The Self-Organization of Dichloromethane drop on a surfactant solution is the result of highly interconnected processes that occur in this system like evaporation, dissolution and mass transfer. These processes lead to several different hydrodynamic instabilities that act together. The research is carried out in collaboration with Véronique Pimienta and Jacques Magnaudet from the University of Toulouse (France) and Charles Antoine from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris (France).
Swarm Behavoir in Biological Systems and Swarms of Robots
"The sum is more than its parts" - this old wisdom saying is actually realized in several complex systems which we can observe in nature like in flocks of birds, swarms of bees or colonies of ants. We are specially interested in ants and bees and what we can learn from them to apply this knowledge to different systems. We are in communication with the Institute of Networked and Embedded Systems in regards to their research on swarms of robots.
Self-gravitating systems: thermodynamic and dynamic instabilities
Systems kept bound by gravity, such as stars or stellar clusters, can be interpreted as the manifestation of complexity.
In particular, these systems exhibit some peculiar features during their evolutive path, because of the rise of
thermodynamic and/or dynamical instabilities. Thanks to the tools provided by the statistical mechanics, we are able to
study and understand this puzzling behaviour of self-gravitating systems. This research is carried out in collaboration
with Pierre-Henri Chavanis (University of Toulouse, France) and Marco Merafina (University of Rome, Italy).
For details on our research please contact us or have a look at our publications which are listed in the publication section.