ISING LECTURERS-2021

	Bertrand Berche (Personal webpage) IJL, University de Lorraine Bertrand Berche was born on May 6, 1963 in Metz, France. He obtained his Msc in physics and applied physics in 1987 from Henri Poincaré University of Nancy, later completing his PhD studies here in 1991. Since then, he has remained at the same university, which in 2009 became a part of the University of Lorraine, as Maître de Conférences. He habilitated in 1997 and became a full professor in 1998. Between 2008–2011 he was president of the Condensed Matter Section of the National Council of Universities, France. In 2008-2013 he was Director of the Physics Department at the University of Lorraine, and since 2007, he is involved in the organization of a French-German doctoral college which then became the L4-collaboration between Leipzig, Lorraine, Lviv and Coventry. He was advisor and co-advisor of ten PhD students. He was awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa of the Institute of Condensed Matter Physics of Lviv in 2016. His research concerns mainly Statistical Physics, Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics and History of Sciences.
	Jonathan Donges (Personal webpage) Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany Dr. Jonathan Donges is co-leader of the FutureLab on Earth Resilience in the Anthropocene (www.pik-potsdam.de/earthresilience) at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK, Germany), leader of the PIK working group on Whole Earth System Analysis and co-speaker of the COPAN collaboration (www.pik-potsdam.de/copan). He also holds a researcher position at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, Sweden, and is Visiting Research Collaborator at High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton University, both in the scope of the Earth Resilience and Sustainability Initiative (www.earthresiliencesustainability.org). Jonathan holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Humboldt University Berlin and has published on a variety of topics including Earth system analysis, climatology, paleoclimate, social-ecological systems, complex networks, complex systems theory, nonlinear dynamics, and time series analysis.
	Reinhard Folk (Personal webpage) Johannes Kepler University Reinhard Folk was born in Neuendettelsau, Germany, on 29 April 1945. He completed his doctoral degree at Vienna University in 1973. In 1973 Folk took up a research position within the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Linz. It was here he become a Senior Associate Professor in 1984 eventually retiring from this position on 1 December 2009. Between 1986--1987 he also held the position of Visiting Associate Professor (Chair of Prof. W\"olfle) at the Physics Department of the Technical University Munich, Germany. His research interests lie in condensed matter physics; phase transitions; the history of physics. During his distinguished career he was awarded the Walter Schottky Prize of the German Physical Society (together with Volker Dohm) in 1982 and a Degree 'Doctor ho\-noris causa' by the Institute for Condensed Matter Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Lviv in 2009.
	Luis Gómez Nava (Personal webpage) Institute of Theoretical Biology, Department of Biology, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin Luis Gómez Nava was born on March 19th 1988 in Mexico City. He graduated from the Faculty of Sciences, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad NacionaL Autónoma de México, UNAM) in 2012. He completed his PhD in 2018 at the University of Nice (Université Côte d’Azur, UCA) under the supervision of Fernando Peruani. His thesis entitled “Phenomenology of active particles with finite and discrete internal states: an individual and collective study” introduces a new class of active particles that display different phenomenologies, many of which are observed in biological systems at different scales, ranging from microscopical systems (chemotaxis) up to collective animal behavior at macroscopical scales. Luis Gómez Nava currently is a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Pawel Romanczuk (Collective Information Processing group) at the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he studies the collective behavior of highly synchronized groups of fish with particular emphasis on the critical properties of this real-life system.
	Ralph Kenna (Personal webpage) Coventry University Professor Ralph Kenna is a statistical physicist who specialises in critical phenomena and socio physics. Born in Athlone, Ireland, on 27 August 1964, he completed his PhD at the Karl-Franzens-Universit ä t Graz, Austria, in 1993. Kenna was a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool (1994- 1997) and Trinity College Dublin (1997-1999) where he lectured until 2002. He joined Coventry University in 2002 where he co-founded the Applied Mathematics Research Centre. He founded the Statistical Physics Group at Coventry and is Co-Director of the L4 Collaboration (Leipzig-Lorraine-Lviv-Coventry). His research concerns the statistical physics of phase transitions and complex systems. Kenna has generated over 100 published papers, has given a similar number of presentations internationally, and been awarded over 1M in grant income. He is an editor for Condensed Matter Physics and Advances in Complex Systems as well as the Springer book-series Simulating the Past.
	Winnie Poel (Personal webpage) Institute of Theoretical Biology, Department of Biology, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin Winnie is currently studying fundamental properties of visual networks and complex contagion with applications to collective behavior of locusts and fish. She has a background in theoretical physics and has previously studied the formation of patterns on networks of nonlinear oscillators. More specifically, she focused on the influence of the network topology on pattern formation. She has a broad interest in dynamic processes on networks, such as the spreading of information or diseases, and was already engaged in research of social influence in human groups as a student assistant.
	Pawel Romanczuk (Personal webpage) Institute of Theoretical Biology, Department of Biology, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin Pawel has a back ground in theoretical physicist and is interested in application of statistical physics and stochastic processes to biological and ecological problems. He has worked on mathematical models of collective motion in biology, as well as related problems of pattern formation and self-propelled motion. Among other things he is currently interested in the question how collective behavior is shaped and constrained by locally available sensory information, how to determine causal information flows between individuals in animal groups, and how do animal and human groups process information in a collective way.