3rd Stanislaw Lem Workshop on Biodiversity and Evolution

Finally, we'll have the next iteration in our notorious series of Stanislaw Lem Workshops. This year's event is the third workshop in the series and it will take place from March 6-9, 2023 at the WasserCluster Lunz, Austria. It will be organized together by Robert Ptacnik, me, and my group on Mathematical Modelling at the ICBM. We are very happy that Robert is willing to host us at his institute for this occasion.

The Stanislaw Lem workshops aim to bring together scientists, researchers, and enthusiasts in the field of theoretical ecology, evolution, and biodiversity, to facilitate discussions and knowledge exchange on the latest developments, trends, and challenges in these fields. The special nature of these workshops is that they combine a loose mix of scientific presentations with interactive activities and excursions that provide ample opportunities for networking and informal discussions.

The Stanislaw workshop series was born at the time when I was still Junior Professor for Theoretical Ecology at University of Potsdam. Together with my former postdoc, Andriy Bandrivskyy, we organized the first workshop, which was focused on Theories of Evolution, to take place in Lviv, Ukraine in 2005. Lviv is also the birthplace of the writer Stanislaw Lem, hence the name of the series. Since this workshop was such a success, we soon organized a follow-up, titled ‘Theories of species richness - an entangled route to Santa Rosalia’, which took place February 19-23, 2007 in Yasinia in the mid of the Carpathian mountains. Right at this time, I made my move to become a full professor at the University of Oldenburg. In the turmoil of this transition the workshop series has been somewhat out of the spotlight and was shamefully neglected. I am the more pleased that we have managed to come back to this and succeeded in reviving the workshop series with new life.

This year's workshop is a four-day event focused on the book “Foundations in Ecology II” by Miller and Travis, which is a collection of classic papers that laid the foundations of modern ecology. The collection covers a wide range of topics, including population dynamics, community ecology, and ecosystem function. During the workshop, we will explore these classic papers and discuss their relevance to contemporary research in ecology and evolution. We will also examine the latest advances and research directions in the field. Not least, with participants from Robert's group at the Aquacluster in Lunz, from Frank Hilker's group on Applied Systems Science in Osnabrück, the HIFMB and my group on Mathematical Modelling in Oldenburg, we want to use the workshop to initiate, and deepen, the cooperation among these groups.