People
Curious about joining us? Prospective Bachelor's, Master's, and PhD students are always welcome to get in touch with Philip.
Principal Investigator
Philip Bittihn
Principal Investigator
Physicist working on the emergence of collective behavior in living systems — from bacterial colonies to growing tissues and tumors, and active matter more broadly. PhD in Göttingen, postdoc at UC San Diego, group leader at the MPI-DS since 2021.
PhD Students
Torben Sunkel
PhD Student
Multicellular systems as manifestations of heterogeneous active matter.
Ilias-Marios Sarris
PhD Student
Collective effects of differential growth in dense cellular matter.
Master's Students
Lucas Reum
Master's Student
Mechanical and collective effects of cell-cycle barrier-crossing dynamics.
Tobias Büchner
Master's Student
Proliferation in agent-based and continuum models.
Jonas Willms
Master's Student
Particle-based simulations of filaments.
Finn Albrecht
Master's Student
Stress dynamics during growth in confinement.
Patrick Zimmer
Master's Student
Dimensionality and confinement effects on competition in renewing cellular active matter (joint supervision with Yoav Pollack).
Bachelor's Students
Philipp Rademacher
Bachelor's Student
Transitions in confined cellular matter.
Kjell Thorge Reinisch
Bachelor's Student
Pressure-dependent growth at expanding fronts.
Lennart Fischer
Bachelor's Student
Motility and mixing under volume expansion in a viscoelastic environment.
Associated Researchers
Lukas Hupe
Associated Researcher
Former postdoc (PhD 2021–2025); ongoing collaboration on collective dynamics of proliferating active matter.
Jonas Isensee
Associated Researcher
Former postdoc (PhD 2021–2025), now at Teclion, Kassel; ongoing collaboration on orientational order in growing matter.
Samantha Lish
Associated Researcher
Former OxCam PhD student, now at Technion; ongoing collaboration on active matter and embryoid self-organization.
Alumni
Former group members and the projects they carried out with us.
- Torben Sunkel — B.Sc. 2022 & M.Sc. 2024–2025 · Growing-spheroid dynamics and motility-induced mixing (now PhD student in the group)
- Carl Hormes — B.Sc. 2023–2025 · Diffusion and growth as drivers of shape relaxation in cohesive cell aggregates
- Leif Peters — M.Sc. 2023–2025 · Transgenerational trajectory statistics in a minimal cell model with division and removal
- Leonard Eike Mantel — B.Sc. 2024 · From two-dimensional to three-dimensional excitable media
- Tobias Büchner — B.Sc. 2023–2024 · Separate effects of volume expansion and division in growing cell aggregates (now Master's student in the group)
- Lisa Graßmel — B.Sc. 2023–2024 · Stress dynamics and relaxation in confined cell populations
- Yoav Pollack — Associated postdoc 2019–2022 · Mechanical fitness and competition in homeostatic tissues
- Christina Goss — Research intern 2021 (Northwestern University) · Pressure-dependent growth and self-organization
- Thomas Boukéké-Lesplulier — Research intern 2021 · Bacterial population growth in response to nutrients and antibiotic resistance
- Lukas Hupe — M.Sc. 2019–2021 · Ordering principles in growing populations of rod-shaped particles (now associated researcher)
- Jonas Isensee — M.Sc. 2020–2021 · Dynamics of mechanical stresses in simulations of growing rods (now associated researcher)
- Florian Aubermann — Matter to Life M.Sc. lab rotation 2021 · Minimal in silico model for cell motility
- Dorian Marx — B.Sc. 2020–2021 · Mechano-chemical coupling of enzymes at high densities (co-supervised with Jaime Agudo-Canalejo)
- Henrik tom Wörden — B.Sc. 2012 / M.Sc. 2013–2014 · Cardiac tissue electric-field stimulation modeling (co-supervised)
- Hauke Hähne — B.Sc. 2013 · Multi-site pacing for spiral wave termination (co-supervised)
- Andreas Mayer — B.Sc. 2012 · Spatio-temporal dynamics in neonatal ventricular tissue (co-supervised)
- Anna Behrend — M.Sc./Diploma 2009–2011 · Pinned spiral waves with pulsed electric fields (co-supervised)