Connecting Science

Scientific advancement takes place not only in deeply specialized areas of expertise but especially at the interfaces of different disciplines.

Science for the world of tomorrow

As a platform for integrating the sciences, FIAS provides a foundation for decisive progress in research through cooperation, exchanging ideas, and overcoming structural barriers between the disciplines. About 180 scientists from more than 20 countries are doing research at FIAS.

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Research Areas

Theoretical Physics

Theoretical physics is the discipline that aims at describing how the world works in terms of fundamental equations. The goal is to abstract explicit phenomena by reducing them to underlying principles that are responsible for many different manifestations in nature.


The brain is considered the most complex structure on earth. It is composed of a network of billions of nerve cells. Our goal is to understand how cognitive phenomena can arise from the collective interactions of these many neural elements.

Computer Science

Within the last decade high performance computers have become an integral part in todays science and society. Most simulations and experimental analysations of complex systems require a high amount of computing power.

Life Sciences

Theoretical biology aims at a quantitative understanding of biological systems, their dynamics and interaction across scales. To this end new analysis approaches are developed to extract relevant information from either tera and petabyte sized data sets, or from very scarce data.

Systemic Risk

The latest financial crisis has painfully revealed the importance of a working financial system for the real economy. Our research takes an interdisciplinary approach drawing on expertise from machine learning, information theory and complex systems.