Available projects for Bachelor, Master, and PhD thesis

General considerations

For your bachelor's-, master's- or PhD-thesis you can expect three months to three years of exciting work at the intersection between physics and theoretical biology. Current open questions in the field of biomolecular dynamics, ranging from condensed matter physics to life sciences and from material design to pharmaceutical industry, often require state-of-the-art numerical techniques like biomolecular dynamics simulations and large-scale computer simulations. The research we offer involves molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, methods to reduce the dimensionality of the problem, machine learning, various analysis methods and more.

Things you can learn

Depending on the topic of your thesis, this might involve
  • deep insights in the thematic complex
  • simulations of molecular systems of biological/pharmaceutical interest
  • development and implementation of analysis software
  • 'big-data' MD simulations analysis using state-of-the-art analysis techniques
  • discovery of important properties in the data and their presentation

What you should bring along

  • Interest in computational physics
  • Basic knowledge in programming (we mostly use Python3)
  • Enthusiasm for scientific work and discussion

Bachelor's thesis

Lasting only three months, a bachelor's thesis project typically focuses on a quite well-defined topic, e.g., devise and test a new method for some well-established model problem. For many students, the bachelor's thesis work is the first chance to do science on a professional level.

Example a of recent bachelor's thesis:

VAMPnets analysis of the structural dynamics of a peptide helix, Lennart König

Master's thesis

Working actively in the thematic area for one year means that you can not only get a good overview of the topics, but you can also develop and implement your own ideas. The rough scope is given by the topic, but the student is encouraged to try own approaches which are then discussed on a regular basis and a feedback and guidance is given.

Example a of recent Master's thesis

Markov State Modeling of Nonequilibrium Biomolecular Data, Georg Diez

PhD thesis

Becoming a PhD in Physics in our group means that you get to chance to spend three to four years of your academic life to gain profound insights and hopefully solve an intriguing problem of theoretical biophysics. Within that time, you become an expert in a highly topical field of computational physics, which will be the key for a postdoctoral position at some major universities or the starting point of a career in privat industry.

Example a of recent PhD thesis

Energy and Signal Transport in Photoswitched Proteins, Adnan Gulzar

Available projects:

Research projects are available in principle for all research topics. To learn more about this, please write an email to Prof. Gerhard Stock to arrange a vistit of the group.