Breaking Confines
Breaking Confines
Interdisciplinary Model-Building for a Complex World
March 2018 - September 2022
Model-building is a methodological centerpiece for addressing the challenges of a complex world. The Breaking Confines (BreaCon) cooperation group is intended to deal with modeling practices by interdisciplinary reflection and exchange. Its participants come from physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, the social sciences, history, and philosophy. They join forces in combining model-building as a central epistemic activity with studies on and analysis of model-building. The envisaged cooperative research process is essentially interdisciplinary in that the migration of models across disciplinary boundaries is pursued. Problems from different fields are supposed to be tackled by comparing, adjusting, elaborating and redesigning modeling approaches and techniques. At the same time, methodological characteristics of these endeavors are scrutinized by an interdisciplinary collaboration of the involved scientists with philosophers and historians of science. Such reciprocal disciplinary fertilization offers the prospect of enhancing research in substantive and methodological respect. The cooperation group is organized into three research fields that focus on distinctive aspects of model-building. These fields deal with how macroscopic properties are related to micro-level interactions, how diversity and heterogeneity is to be taken care of in model-building, and what are promising ways of using models for heuristic purposes. The cooperation group is intended to perform a conceptual and social experiment on reciprocal interdisciplinary interaction and the fertilization through methodological analysis. Setting up such an interdisciplinary backbone running through and interconnecting various fields of the natural and social sciences is intended to provide a proof of concept that doing research jointly across disciplinary boundaries is beneficial to the fields involved.
Members
- Convenors
- Fellows
Dario Anselmetti
Dario Anselmetti is a professor in experimental biophysics investigating the interplay of stucture and function of biological macromolecules and cells with nanotechnological and microfluidic methods at the single-molecule and single-cell level.Andrea Bräutigam
Research in the group Computational Biology focuses on the analyses of metabolic and regulatory network. We construct schematic, kinetic and stoichiometric models based on transcriptome and metabolome data.Herbert Dawid
The research of Herbert Dawid focusses on the analysis of economic dynamics, in particular in Industrial Econonmics, Innovation and Macroeconomics, as well as on the evaluation of the effects of different types of economic policy measures. He uses in his research a wide range of metholological approaches including agent-based modeling, dynamic game-theory and network analysis.Karl-Josef Dietz
The Research group at Plant Biochemistry and Physiology explores molecular mechanisms that allow plants to dynamically acclimate to a changing environment.Harald Gröger
The focus of our research work centers on the use of enzymes as "catalysts from Nature" for the synthesis of chemicals, in particular industrial chemicals. In these studies the application spectrum of enzymes with respect to the development of environmentally friendly and efficient organic syntheses of the target molecules as well as the combination of enzymes with "classical chemical" catalysts towards so-called one-pot reactions is investigated.Thomas Hellweg
The Hellweg group is doing research in the area of structure and dynamics of soft matter. In this context the focus is on so-called "smart" materials and on their controlled self-organisation. Besides scattering experiments (neutron and X-ray scattering) also advanced imaging techniques like e.g. cryogenic transmission electron microscopy are used in the study of these soft matter materials.Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus
My research focus is combustion and its role in the energy transformation process. We provide experimental data for the validation and (further) development of combustion models that are used for practical processes and systems.Angelika Kühnle
Angelika Kühnle is professor in physical chemistry. Her research interest focuses on exploring dynamics and structure formation of organic molecules on insulator surfaces, including molecular self-assembly and on-surface synthesis. An important aspect is elucidating fundamental processes at surfaces and interfaces of dielectric materials. The work comprises method development for high-resolution imaging both in ultra-high vacuum and at the solid-liquid interface, hydration layer mapping and novel approaches for Kelvin probe force microscopy in electrolyte solutions.Marie Kaiser
Marie I. Kaiser is a Junior Professor at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. Her main research interests are the philosophy of biology, the general philosophy of science, and the metaphysics of biological practice. In particular, her work focuses on the concept of reductive explanation, mechanisms, part-whole relations, causal modeling, complex systems, biological individuality, and the methodology of philosophy of science.Olaf Kruse
Olaf Kruse is Scientific Director of the Center for Biotechnology (CeBiTec) at Bielefeld University. His research focusses on the establishment of microalgae as sustainable green cell factories in biotechnology.Caroline Müller
Caroline Müller is a chemical ecologist, interested in the nature and function of natural compounds that mediate interactions between plants and other organisms. In our group, we focus on the isolation and identification of such compounds and the elucidation of their functions in an ecological, behavioural, genetic, population-biological and evolutionary context.Carsten Reinhardt
Carsten Reinhardt works on the historical development of research methods and models in an interdisciplinary context. His main focus is on the natural sciences and technologies.Klaus Reinhold
Bielefeld University, Faculty of BiologyOliver Razum
Oliver Razum is Dean of Bielefeld School of Public Health and heads the Department of Epidemiology & International Public Health. His research is on socioeconomic inequalities and health. He focuses in particular on migration and health and on contextual effects on health.Günter Reiss
In our working group Thin Films and Physics of Nanostructures at the Faculty of Physics, we investigate the relations between magnetic properties and the electric transport in solid state systems. We work on both basic effects as well as on possible applications to new data storage systems and sensors.Alexander Sczyrba
Bielefeld University, Center for Biotechnology - CeBiTecDorothee Staiger
My lab is interested in the molecuar underpinnings of RNA-based regulation in circadian timekeeping and responses to stress. We employ high throughput techniques such as Next Gen sequencing, iCLIP, RNA immunoprecipitation and interactome capture to unravel regulatory networks shaping the transcriptome.