Mainz Materials Simulation Days (MMSD) 2025: Life-Like and Living Materials

MMSD is a traditional biannual discussion meeting organized by the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research and the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. The topic of the 2025 meeting is “life-like and living matter”. We will discuss emerging phenomena in life-like materials, and challenges for modelling and simulating them. This year we are experimenting with a new concept for the format of the event. The workshop will be co-hosted with CECAM-US-CENTRAL – the first US CECAM node housed at the University of Chicago – and the UChicago Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC). It will proceed simultaneously in Chicago and Mainz with the two sites linked via videoconferencing. Half of the talks will be delivered live at each site and livestreamed to the other. The concept is similar to a hybrid event, but all of the US speakers will gather in Chicago and all the European speakers in Mainz to gain the benefits of face-to-face interactions at a local level while avoiding the large carbon footprint of transatlantic travel. From a timing perspective, the conference will proceed each day approximately 8 am – 3 pm in Chicago and 1–10 pm in Mainz, and comprise a combination of invited talks, contributed talks, and live and virtual poster sessions.