Foyer on the first floor with a view of the library entrance

Research

The Max Planck Institute for Human Development is dedicated to the study of human development, education, and human-machine interaction. Researchers of various disciplines; including psychology, education, sociology, medicine, history, economics, computer science, and mathematics; work together on interdisciplinary projects at the Berlin Institute.

The research questions they examine include how people make effective decisions even under time pressure and information overload, how the school as an institution affects students; development and learning processes, how the interaction between behaviour and brain function changes over a persons lifespan, how human emotions change in a historical context and how they have affected the course of history itself, as well as what social innovations and challenges digitalization brings with it.


Research Centers

At the moment, research at the Institute is primarily organized in four research centers:
 


Lise Meitner Groups

The Max Planck Society has developed the Lise Meitner Excellence Program to attract outstanding women to scientific careers and to enable them to develop their careers according to their opportunities. The Lise Meitner groups are funded for a period of five years.
 


Max Planck Partner Groups

Max Planck Partner Groups have been developed as an instrument for the support of collaborative research in target areas which are scientifically promising and innovative, geared to the future and of mutual interest to Max Planck Institutes (MPI) and to the designated partner institutions. Max Planck Partner Groups enable both the MPI and the Head of the Partner Group to continue a sustained scientific interaction.
 


Research Groups

In research groups, young scientists work on various topics according to their fields of interest.

ERC-funded Research Group
With the Consolidator Grant of the European Research Council (ERC), the European Union supports promising scientists at the beginning of an independent career. In addition to the ERC Consolidator Grant, the research group "Adaptive Memory and Decision Making" is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
 
Max Planck Research Groups
The Max Planck Society offers gifted young scientists and researchers the possibility of independent scientific work through its Max Planck Research Groups. They are initially limited to five years, but can be extended. They use the infrastructure and administration of a Max Planck Institute, but have their own personnel and material resources, which enable the group leaders to independently pursue a research project.

Currently, two Max Planck research groups are working at the MPIB.
 
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