Christoph Neugebauer

I am a second-year PhD student in the Department of Chemistry of the University of Cambridge, UK. I am currently working on critical phenomena in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, in particular on absorbing-state phase transitions that occur, for example, in models for the spread of epidemics. My studies focus on the effect of disorder on the critical behavior.

I studied physics as my undergraduate degree, also at the University of Cambridge.

My favorite sport is football (soccer), but I also enjoy playing tennis, table tennis and badminton.

Questionnaire:

1. What topics you have some expertise in and would you be willing to help others learn them?

I have some expertise in statistical mechanics, scaling, and critical phenomena.

2. What do you want to learn?

I would like to learn about processes on complex networks and network theory in general, critical behavior and phase transition in biological systems and social models.

3. Do you have any projects that would benefit from interdisciplinary approach?

Not at the moment, but I'm very keen on starting some.

4. Do you have any ideas for what sort of project you would like to attack this summer?

Projects that involve one or all of the aspects mentioned in question 2.

5. What's your favorite "big problem"?

Understanding how systems consisting of large numbers of components/particles that obey relatively simple rules or laws of interactions give rise to complex collective behavior (and finding methods with which this behavior can be analyzed).

6. If you were given the opportunity to see where we were in one hundred years with respect to progress on one problem/subject, what would it be?

Well, having studied physics, I will have to say that I would want to find out how the understanding of the fundamental forces of nature has advanced, i.e. what the progress on a Grand Unified Theory is.

Chris