Just concentrate on your studies! We will financially support you with a stipend during your Master’s and a working contract during the PhD phase of the graduate program.

Conduct cutting-edge research at the forefront of Matter to Life, a highly interdisciplinary and rapidly emerging field. With a student body from across the globe, our program is taught entirely in English.

During our integrated graduate program, you will be supervised by one or more of our MPS MtL Fellows and profit from the broad and excellent School’s network.

Our graduates are prepared for a broad spectrum of careers — from academia, research management and industrial R&D to consulting, data science, and many more. Whichever path you choose, we will equip you with the skills and experience to thrive.

This year's MtL Spring Days took us to the medieval city of Marburg – and delivered everything from surprise snowfall to inspiring keynotes and lively poster sessions. Fellows, PhD candidates and guests shared science at its finest. We returned with new friendships, fresh collaborations, and are now excitedly looking forward to our nex MtL Days in Fall! 

On the occasion of International Women's Day, our PhD candidates Irene and Anna interviewed their peer Aysecan, who is about to defend her dissertation. She talks about collagen, cryo-electron microscopy, resilience, and what she would tell her younger self at the start of this journey

Mussa completed his practical training on “Signalling Dynamics in Tissue Repair” with MtL Fellow Philippe (†) Bastiaens at MPI of Molecular Physiology

Andrey explored his research passions during his lab rotation in a collaborative project led by MtL Fellows Hendrik Dietz and Petra Schwille, which took him into the rapidly developing world of protein design.

Lecture topic: Synthetic cells – how to stay “alive”?
What keeps matter alive? This question remains one of the most profound in science — not least because we still lack a universal definition of life. Yet, most researchers agree that compartmentalization, metabolism, and self-replication are the essential hallmarks of living systems.
In our group, we assemble life-like materials by using synthetic cells as interactive building blocks. Within these systems, the transduction of energy and information is central to organizing life-like behaviors and enabling complex, autonomous functions. These processes begin at the molecular scale through chemical reactions and self-assembly and extend to engineering continuous fluxes of energy and matter that maintain the system far from thermodynamic equilibrium.
In this lecture, I will introduce fundamental strategies to guide and sustain life-like systems out of equilibrium by designing minimal metabolic reaction networks. We will examine how membrane proteins enable the construction of selectively open, active compartments that serve as chassis for synthetic cells. I will conclude by discussing our research on metabolically active vesicles that act as self-sustaining nanoreactors, artificial mitochondria, and interdependent cross-feeding organelles.

Lecture topic: Bioengineering of recombinant spider silk proteins for biomedical applications
Proteins reflect one fascinating class of natural polymers with huge potential for technical as well as biomedical applications. One well-known example is spider silk, a protein fiber with excellent mechanical properties such as strength and toughness. We have developed biotechnological methods using bacteria as production hosts, which produce structural proteins mimicking the natural ones. Further, we can specifically functionalize the recombinant silk proteins with cell-specific and bio-selective tags.
We employ silk proteins in different application forms such as hydrogels, particles or films with tailored properties, which can be employed especially for tissue engineering applications. In such applications, the performance of materials largely depends on their surfaces and is further strictly related to the materials biocompatibility. Spider silk hydrogels can be employed as new bioinks for biofabrication. Their elastic behavior dominates over the viscous behavior over the whole angular frequency range with a low viscosity flow behavior and good form stability. No structural changes occur during the printing process, and the hydrogels solidify immediately after printing by robotic dispensing. Due to the shape stability, it was possible to directly print multiple layers on top of each other without structural collapse. Cell-loaded spider silk constructs can be easily printed without the need of additional cross-linkers or thickeners for mechanical stabilization.
Our bio-inspired approach serves as a basis for new materials in a variety of tissue engineering applications such as heart muscle regeneration.

INM – Leibniz Institute for New Materials, Saarbrücken & Max Planck Bristol Center for Minimal Biology

This is not the beginning of a joke, but rather the beginning of every MtL Day—and the MtL Fall Day 2025 in Mainz was no exception. PhD candidates from diverse backgrounds and Fellows from various disciplines convened as knowledge was shared, exchanged, absorbed, and amplified. This year’s host: The Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz. 

In August, a group of MtL PhD candidates, Fellows and invited speakers  gathered at the Umweltforschungsstation Schneefernerhaus on the Zugspitze for four days of talks, workshops, and stargazing.
Read the recap! 

Starting in October, there will be 18 new MtL Fellows, creating 18 new opportunities for our PhD candidates to pursue exciting research projects. 

Get a glimpse into their research!