Active, Adaptive and Autonomous Matter

A WE-Heraeus Summer School titled 'Active, Adaptive and Autonomous Matter' held 06 Jul - 18 Jul 2026. The school examines how living and synthetic active matter communicate, coordinate, and make decisions through physical, chemical and informational cues. It focuses on chemical communication, quorum sensing, and informed active matter, and on how chemical signaling and density-dependent feedback shape collective motion and self-organization. The programme aims to bridge active matter physics with biological regulation to reveal new principles of organization in complex systems.