Viola Priesemann

Prof. Dr. Viola Priesemann is a physicist and neuroscientist serving as a Professor of Physics (W3, 20%) at the University of Göttingen and Head of a Max Planck Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, Germany. Her research spans complex systems, neural networks, and epidemiology, with particular focus on collective information processing in living systems and social networks. She leads the Theory of Complex Systems research group, which investigates self-organization and learning principles in both biological and artificial networks.

Her research interests include understanding emergent information flow ('infogenesis') in neural networks using statistical physics and information theory approaches, as well as studying information and disinformation spread in social networks, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has developed mathematical models to analyze pandemic dynamics and has been influential in shaping policy responses in Germany and Europe. Her work reveals striking similarities between information propagation in neural networks and social networks, suggesting common principles across vastly different scales of organization.

Dr. Priesemann's scholarly contributions have been recognized with numerous prestigious awards including the Communitas Award of the Max Planck Society, the Science Award of Lower Saxony, the Medaille für naturwissenschaftliche Publizistik from the German Physical Society, and the Dannie-Heineman Award. She is a member of the Junge Akademie of the Leopoldina and BBAW, and serves on the Cluster of Excellence 'Multiscale Bioimaging' and the Campus Institute for Data Science.

Her research group comprises numerous PhD students, postdocs, and collaborators who work on diverse projects ranging from theoretical neuroscience to pandemic modeling. She has published extensively in high-impact journals including Science, Nature Communications, and The Lancet, with her work on COVID-19 pandemic modeling receiving significant attention for its policy relevance during the global health crisis.