FIAS Scientific Report 2011 - Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies ...

Preface
The year 2011 has been a year of continuous development for the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.
Scientists at FIAS have successfully continued to pursue their research in various branches of the natural
sciences. There have been changes in personnel and in the funding situation, as outlined below, but no dramatic
breakpoints. This Annual Report documents the scientific progress achieved in the past year through
a collection of brief reports on individual research projects. In addition, important developments at cooperating
institutions will be summarized, as well as colloquium schedules, conferences organized by FIAS, and
the teaching activities in the framework of the Frankfurt International Graduate School for Science (FIGSS).
The bibliography of publications by authors with FIAS affiliation, which complements the report, this time
has been split into two parts, distinguishing between journal publications and conference reports/preprints.
Quite a number of leading scientists have either left or joined FIAS in 2011. In the field of physics, Fellow
Paul Romatschke has left for a professorship at the University of Colorado, Boulder, CO and Junior Fellow
Zhe Xu has become professor at one of the leading Chinese research universities, Tsinghua University in
Beijing. A new arrival from Duke University, Durham, NC is Dr. Hannah Petersen who has won a grant to
set up a Helmholtz Young Investigator Group. In the field of neuroscience a new Fellow has been appointed,
Matthias Kaschube, who joined FIAS from Princeton University and also holds a new W2 professorship
for Computational Neuroscience. A new Adjunct Fellow of FIAS is Prof. Visvanathan Ramesh who has
accepted a W3 professorship for Software Engineering at the Department of Computer Science of Goethe
University and has taken over as head of the Bernstein Focus Neurotechnology. Junior Fellow Gordon Pipa
has been appointed to a professorship at the Institute of Cognitive Science at Osnabrück University.
The funding of FIAS to a large degree rests on external sources; therefore external reviews play an important
role. In 2011 four major projects and collaborating institutions have undergone midterm evaluations. In the
field of physics, the Helmholtz International Center for FAIR (HIC for FAIR) and the Extreme Matter
Institute (EMMI) have been reviewed successfully and will receive substantial funding up to the year 2014
and 2013, resp. Also the program NanoBIC received a favorable evaluation and guarantees for continued
funding from its backer, the Beilstein Institute. The Bernstein Focus Neurotechnology (BFNT) has received
a mixed evaluation report. Presently BFNT is being restructured under the leadership of Prof. Ramesh,
answering demands from the funding agency for a better integration of the various subprojects.
Several new research and collaboration projects have been started in 2011. FIAS is a member of the newly
founded Nuclear Astrophysics Virtual Institute (NAVI) financed by the Helmholtz Association. Furthermore,
FIAS will be at the center of a large international collaboration “Evaporation of microscopic black
holes” (Principal Investigator: Dr. P. Nicolini) funded by a research grant from the German Research Foundation
(DFG). The Meso-Bio-Nano Science team at FIAS (Prov. A.V. Solov’yov) coordinates the EU funded
international COST Action Nano-IBCT (Nanoscale insights into ion beam cancer therapy). In the field of
High Performance Computing, a Research and Development a contract with KACST (Saudi Arabia) has
been signed with the intent to build a scalable HPC system prototype.
One long-standing problem of FIAS could not yet be resolved, i.e., the structural imbalance in favor of
the branches of physics and neuroscience. In 2011 intense efforts were made to strengthen the branches
of chemistry and/or life science, using the funds made available by the former president of the Board of
Trustees, Dr. Helmut Maucher, and other sponsors. Twice a joint professorship was offered, in collaboration
with Goethe University, to a high-profile scientist, first to a theoretical quantum chemist, then to a
computational biologist. Unfortunately, in both cases competing offers from renowned institutions were
given preference. FIAS will continue in its efforts to maintain and widen its broad interdisciplinary basis.
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