Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences
Mathematical Physics and Stochastic Dynamics
Aljaz Godec has recently been appointed as full professor at the Institute of Physics at the University of Freiburg. Therefore, the Godec group moved to Freiburg on January 1, 2026. He will remain affiliated with the MPI-NAT for a transition period.
New address Mathematical Physics and Stochastic Dynamics Institute of Physics, University of Freiburg Hermann-Herder-Str. 3 79104 Freiburg, Germany
We develop and apply the methods of mathematical physics and the theory of stochastic processes to study phenomena in biophysics. Our main research focus is currently the non-equilibrium statistical mechanics of single molecules. In particular, we aim at a trajectory-based description of macromolecular conformation dynamics as well as of their spatial transport, binding, and reactions. In our work we employ a combination of rigorous analysis corroborated by computer simulations.
A research team at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Multidisciplinary Sciences has discovered a previously unknown mechanism that allows mechanical signals to travel across proteins. The lever-like principle makes allostery physically tangible and opens new perspectives for drug design and synthetic biology.
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Small biological systems are inherently stochastic due to thermal fluctuations. Inferring dissipation, that is, if and how far biological systems (or processes) are driven out of equilibrium, from fluctuating observations, which typically track only a small subset of degrees of freedom, remains a key challenge in modern non-equilibrium physics.
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Blom, K.; Thiele, U.; Godec, A.: Local order controls the onset of oscillations in the nonreciprocal Ising model. Physical Review E 111 (2), 024207 (2025)
Goswami, K.; Cherstvy, A. G.; Godec, A.; Metzler, R.: Anomalous diffusion of active Brownian particles in responsive elastic gels: Nonergodicity, non-Gaussianity, and distributions of trapping times. Physical Review E 110, 044609 (2024)
Blom, K.; Song, K.; Vouga, E.; Godec, A.; Makarov, D. E.: Milestoning estimators of dissipation in systems observed at a coarse resolution. PNAS 121 (17), e2318333121 (2024)
