Fachbeirat Meeting

During the first week of December, the Institute was evaluated by the Fachbeirat - a group of prominent scientists appointed by the Max Planck Society to oversee the institute and give guidance. There were talks by the directors and a number of scientists, meetings with various groups of people (all the postdocs, or all the PhD students), etc. It was actually very interesting for me to get an overview of what the Institute is and does.

For the curious, here is an overview of the structure and activities of the Albert Einstein Institute. One should think of the Max Planck Society as a private club, whose purpose is to promote basic scientific research. Various institutes can become members of the club; when a plant physiology institute becomes a member, that institute is now the Max Planck Institute for Plant Physiology. Similarly, the Albert Einstein Institute (AEI) is the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics.

There are four major areas of research at the AEI campus in Golm: Geometric Analysis (the group I belong to), directed by Gerhardt Huisken; Astrophysical Relativity, directed by Bernard Schutz; and Quantum Gravity & Unified Theories, directed by Hermann Nicolai. There is also an "Independent Junior Research Group" working on duality & integrable structures. Finally, there are groups working on experimental aspects of gravity research at the AEI campus in Hannover.