Dioscuri Centre for Physics and Chemistry of Bacteria

Our Centre officially ceased to exist on 1 October 2025. This website provides a record of our activities from October 2020 to September 2025.

Research in the centre revolved around broadly understood biology, physics, and chemistry of bacteria, in particular human pathogens.

The Centre’s main objective was to combine experiments and mathematical modelling to better understand bacterial growth and evolution in the natural environment of pathogenic bacteria: the interior of an animal cell and animal secretions.

The Centre was located in the Institute of Physical Chemistry PAN, Warsaw, Poland.

To fulfill its mission, the Centre partnered with the Evolutionary Theory Department at the MPI Plön. This partnership was the origin of the name “Dioscuri” – in Greek mythology, the Dioscuri were the twin brothers Castor and Pollux.

The Centre was co-funded by the Polish Ministry of Education and Science (MEiN), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and NAWA. The Dioscuri programme is coordinated by the German Max Planck Gesellschaft and the Polish National Science Centre.