Chair News

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portrait photo of Prof Marc Timme
Prof Marc Timme, Chair of Network Dynamics. © Jürgen Lösel for cfaed.

Prof. Marc Timme, head of the Chair of Network Dynamics, won the prestigious Reinhart Koselleck grant promoted by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) – an outstanding success!

The Reinhart-Koselleck grant funds research on strongly driven nonlinear network dynamics for 5 years and amounts to 1.5 Million Euros (incl. overhead). It constitutes the largest single-applicant research grant by the DFG, roughly comparable to an ERC grant on the European level.

Press release Tuesday, July 2, 2024, TUD Dresden University of Technology /// Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed)

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The picture shows a turbulent traffic scene in Africa (Ghana) with a crowded minibus taxi in the foreground.
Crowded Trotro in Accra, Ghana. Photo: @lucianf on flickr, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Public transport systems vary widely around the world. Developed countries in the Global North usually have centrally-planned public transport systems with fixed routes and timetables. In contrast, in the developing countries of the Global South, making up more than 80 % of the world's population, public transportation is mostly provided by informal transport services featuring ad hoc routes, e.g. in the form of privately organized minibus services. Due to their seemingly chaotic operation, such informal transport services are often considered as inefficient from an outside perspective. Due to a lack of data a systematic comparison was not possible so far.

In a new scientific paper recently published in Nature Communications, Kush Mohan Mittal, Marc Timme and Malte Schröder from the Chair of Network Dynamics at TU Dresden analyze and compare the structural efficiency of more than 7,000 formal and informal bus lines across 36 cities and 22 countries. One of the central, surprising findings is that the routes of informal transport self-organize in a way that reaches or even exceeds the efficiency level of centralized services.

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an old GDR bus stop in the countryside. behind it a yellow rapeseed field
Bus stop in a rural area. New forms of mobility could offer an opportunity to make services more flexible in various regions and improve them so that more people can use public transport easily. Photo: Netzwerk ostmodern / Marco Dziallas

Invitation to the kick-off event on July 19 (online)

Where is shared mobility particularly useful and how can we ensure it is sustainable? A new research project has been running at the Chair of Network Dynamics at TU Dresden since July 1, 2023. Ridepooling models developed at the chair are now to be applied nationwide. The researchers are developing a "potential map" of different regions in order to obtain an overview of the applicability of this new type of transport service. The "Where2Share" project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport as part of the mFUND innovation initiative over the period July 2023 to December 2024 with a total of almost 193,000 euros.

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woman holding a sheet of paper with text "we're hiring"

We have a vacant position as a Research Associate at the Chair. The position is focusing on basic research on the nonlinear dynamics of complex systems and networks. Tasks: research on collective dynamical phenomena of complex systems and networks; teaching introductory material of applied mathematics (for physics students), mathematical modeling and statistical physics; support of grant proposals, establishing and executing collaborative research.

Please see the full job advertisement! Closing date for applications: 14 July 2023

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photo of the awarding ceremony of BASF Schwarzheide GmbH Föderpreis - awardee Dr. David-Maximilian Storch
Awarding ceremony of BASF Schwarzheide GmbH Föderpreis: awardee Dr. rer. nat. David-Maximilian Storch; Photo (image detail): Christian Hüller

Once a year, BASF Schwarzheide GmbH selects outstanding scientific works from TU Dresden focusing on sustainability, circular economy or digitalization. One out of three prizes in 2022, endowed with 1,500 Euros, was awarded to David-Maximilian Storch from our chair. His dissertation entitled "Statistical Physics of Urban Mobility" sheds new light on the complex dynamics of modern digital and shared mobility services. The work in particular uncovered how adoption of ride-sharing may be promoted, thus improving more sustainable transport through cleverly using digitization.

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visualisation of route choice schemes of cyclists in urban areas
The route choice of cyclists is subject to various decision factors. For example, many prefer a separate bike lane (top left) instead of sharing space with dense car traffic (top right). Depending on whether streets with heavy car traffic (thick edges) are equipped with dedicated bike paths (blue) or not (gray), cyclists take the direct route (black arrow, bottom left), take detours to stay on bike paths (bottom center) or ride on small side streets (thin edges) (bottom right). Image author: Christoph Steinacker

Turning it downside up: Novel, network-dynamic planning approach for urban bike path infrastructure enables demand-driven design of cycling networks by reversing the usual approach. The new concept could improve the bike-friendliness of cities - and thus their sustainability and climate footprint.
In surveys, a large majority of respondents usually agree that cycling can make a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gases and to sustainable transport, especially in densely populated areas. In contrast, for many countries in reality there is a large gap between desired and actual numbers. In Germany, for example, only 20% of the short-distance of everyday trips in residential environments are covered by bicycle.

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portrait photo of Charlotte Lotze after winning the TUD Science Slam. She presents her award.
Charlotte Lotze (left) with the award. TUD Fellow Solmar-Varela-Salazar (right). Photo: Franziska Schneider, TU Dresden

Last Friday, the extremely popular Long Night of Science (Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften) finally took place again in Dresden, when countless research institutions open their laboratories and let the young and old participate in the diversity of their research topics. The central closing event of the #LNdWDD (with 32.000 visitors!) was a big Science Slam in the almost full Audimax of the TU Dresden. The 6 participants, 5 of them scientists on early career stages and one professor, who did not take part in the competition, are doing research in different fields such as chemistry, biology, physics or traffic science.

The participant from cfaed, Charlotte Lotze (Chair of Network Dynamics), bridges the last two topics: Based on physics, Charlotte is investigating a traffic-related topic in her PhD thesis.

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portrait photo of Dr. Malte Schröder
Dr. Malte Schröder

Ab Mai stellen sich TUD-Forscher:innen im Rahmen der Veranstaltungsreihe "Triff die Koryphäe unter der Konifere" wieder den Fragen der Öffentlichkeit im Botanischen Garten. Bei der Auftaktveranstaltung zur 2. Staffel am 15. Mai 2022 erläutert Dr. Malte Schröder vom cfaed, Lehrstuhl für Netzwerkdynamik, wie die Theoretische Physik helfen kann, neue Formen der Mobilität zu erfassen, zu verstehen und zu verbessern. Die Veranstaltung beginnt um 15:30 Uhr. Die Veranstaltungsreihe wird durch die EXU-Maßnahme "TUD im Dialog" gefördert.

Detaillierte Information hier

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Ride sharing buses (middle) combine direct trips of multiple users and drive shorter in total than the sum of the individual car routes (top). When users walk to a nearby stop, buses drive even shorter routes while maintaining the user travel times (bottom). Author: Charlotte Lotze.

Sustainable mobility is an important research field of the Chair of Network Dynamics (headed by Prof. Marc Timme) at the Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed) at TU Dresden. Here, the chair’s researchers put a strong focus on “ride sharing”, i.e. the bundling of simultaneous trips of several people in one vehicle. A recently published study on this topic addresses the question how a dynamic combination of nearby stops enables more efficient ride sharing services.

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little figures carefully handling a covid test bar
Photo: Marco Federmann / Pixabay.

Scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) and at the Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed / Technische Universität Dresden) show that little differences in behavior decide between success and complete failure of epidemic control. In their study, the scientists were able to show that limits in testing and contact tracing are responsible for this sudden change in the epidemic outcome. Testing followed up by contact tracing is extremely efficient in slowing down epidemics, however once their limit is exceeded the epidemic accelerates resulting in a faster than exponential spread. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.