Dirk Brockmann is a professor at the Institute of Biology at Berlin's Humboldt University. He heads the project group Modelling of Infectious Diseases in the working group Complex Biological Systems at the Institute of Theoretical Biology and the IRI Life Sciences at HU. Dirk Brockmann also heads the Epidemiological Modelling of Infectious Diseases project group at the Robert Koch Institute. Previously, he taught in the USA. After studying theoretical physics and mathematics, he became involved early on with complex phenomena outside the traditional boundaries of physics. He is particularly interested in structures and processes in complex biological and social networks.