Wolf, Fred, Prof. Dr.

Professor of Physics


  • since 2019: Fellow of the Max Planck School "Matter to Life"
  • since 2019: Spokesperson of the German Research Foundation Priority Programme “Evolutionary Optimization of Neuronal Processing”
  • since 2018: Member of the DFG Excellence Cluster “Multiscale Bioimaging: from Molecular Machines to Networks of Excitable Cells”, University of Göttingen
  • since 2018: Acting founding director “Göttingen Campus Institute for Dynamics of Biological Networks”
  • since 2015: Steering board member of the Collaborative Research Cluster "Primate Cognition", Göttingen Campus
  • 2015 - 2019: Co-director of the Leibniz-ScienceCampus "Primate Cognition: From information integration to executive control"
  • 2015 - 2018: Co-director of the Collaborative Research Cluster "Physics to Medicine", Göttingen Campus
  • 2015: Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS)
  • since 2013: Executive director of the Bernstein Centre for Computational Neuroscience Göttingen
  • 2011 - 2014: Steering board member and Section Coordinator for Computational Neuroscience German Neuroscience Society, University of Göttingen, Germany
  • 2010: Program director, “Emerging Techniques in Neuroscience”, Kavli-Institute for Theoretical Physics, UC Santa Barbara, USA
  • Since 2009: Steering Committee of Bernstein Focus for Neurotechnology
  • Since 2008: Professor of Physics (hon.), University of Göttingen, Germany
  • 2006 - 2011: Steering committee of the International Max Planck Research School Neurosciences, Göttingen, Germany
  • Since 2005: Steering committee of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, University of Göttingen, Germany
  • Since 2004: Head of the Research Group ‘Theoretical Neurophysics’, Department of Nonlinear Dynamics, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen
  • 2001 - 2004: Research associate, Max-Planck-Institut für Strömungsforschung, Göttingen
  • 2000: Amos de Shalit Fellow, Racah Institute of Physics and Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
  • 1999: Dr. phil. nat., Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt


Major Research Interests

  • Deep Learning
  • Self-organization of neuronal circuits
  • Neuronal network dynamics