Annalena Kofler and Daniela Macari selected to join the 75th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting

The two researchers from the Empirical Inference and Robotic Materials Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems are among over 600 young scientists from across the world who are given the opportunity to participate in a week of scientific exchange with some of the world’s greatest minds.

Tübingen/Stuttgart/Lindau – Daniela Macari, doctoral researcher in the Robotic Materials Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Stuttgart and Ph.D. Fellow of the Max Planck ETH Zürich Center for Learning Systems, as well as Annalena Kofler, Ph.D. student in the Empirical Inference Department at MPI-IS in Tübingen who is an IMPRS-IS and ELLIS scholar, have been selected to attend this year’s 75th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. The interdisciplinary meeting will take place from 28 June to 3 July 2026 in Lindau, Germany, bringing together around 75 Nobel Laureates with approximately 600 outstanding young scientists from across the world.

Annalena Kofler’s research focuses on developing and adopting state-of-the-art machine learning methods to fascinating physics problems ranging from gravitational waves to particle physics. During her Ph.D., she works on simulation-based inference and neural posterior estimation for gravitational wave signals as a developer of the DINGO package and contributes to data analysis within the LIGO scientific collaboration.

“Since learning in high school about the fundamental building blocks of our universe, I have been fascinated by addressing its open questions. The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting is a unique forum to connect my work at the intersection of physics and machine learning with a global community of scientists, and to exchange ideas across disciplines and generations to advance fundamental science. I am deeply honored to have been nominated by MPI-IS and grateful for the support of my teachers, mentors and collaborators," says Annalena.

Meanwhile, Daniela Macari's research sits at the intersection of materials science, physics, robotics, and polymer chemistry. She develops ultrahigh-performance artificial muscles – soft, lightweight actuators that respond to electric fields and promise transformative applications in soft robotics, prosthetics, and assistive technologies. Her doctoral work has yielded breakthrough results that significantly advance what these materials can achieve, with implications spanning from robotics to biomedical devices.

"Growing up in the small village of Cărpineni in the Republic of Moldova, I did not imagine that science was a career one could pursue. I am immensely grateful to all the teachers, professors, and mentors along the way who encouraged me to follow my passion for the natural sciences – above all my Ph.D. advisors and mentors Christoph Keplinger, Stelian Coros, and Philipp Rothemund, for their invaluable guidance and the endorsement for this event. It is a true honor to represent our institute at this prestigious meeting and to exchange ideas with some of the greatest scientific minds of our time," says Daniela.

Daniela Macari has distinguished herself through numerous invited talks, prizes for her research projects, and successful grant applications. Beyond her research, she is equally invested in the broader scientific community: she presides over the Outreach and Dissemination Committee of the European Society for Electromechanically Active Polymers (EuroEAP) and has co-organized workshops at major international conferences. Her commitment to inclusive science runs deep — from years of work making education accessible to disadvantaged children, including initiating a scholarship program, to her invited first-author viewpoint in Science Robotics on the role of diversity and inclusive leadership in driving scientific innovation, for which she received the 2024 Gender Equality Prize at MPI-IS.

A Ph.D. Fellow of the Max Planck ETH Zürich Center for Learning Systems, Daniela obtained her Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Technical University of Berlin before completing her Master's degree at the Technical University of Munich, including an Erasmus exchange at CentraleSupélec in Paris. Alongside and following her studies, she gained research and development experience in the energy and technology sectors, including robotics. She speaks seven languages.

Meanwhile, Annalena completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Physics at the Technical University of Munich, with additional specialization in statistics and machine learning. During her studies, she was supported by competitive scholarships from the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Max Weber Program. Since starting her Ph.D., she has co-authored several publications and was selected to give a spotlight talk at a NeurIPS workshop (top 4%). She has received multiple awards, including a NeurIPS travel award and a best poster award at the IMPRS-IS Bootcamp.

Annalena is particularly interested in communicating her research to diverse audiences, which has led to invited talks at institutions such as TU Munich, RWTH Aachen, and UC Berkeley. She regularly presents at international workshops across the disciplines, and engages a broad range of audiences, from public outreach events such as Soapbox Science in Tübingen to physics collaboration meetings and machine-learning industry settings. In addition to her research, she contributes to teaching and supervision, develops openly available tutorials, and serves as a Ph.D. representative on the Gender Equality Plan committee at MPI-IS.

The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings have, for 75 years, served as a unique forum for scientific exchange between generations, disciplines, and cultures. The 75th edition is a special milestone: as an interdisciplinary meeting, it brings together the Nobel disciplines of physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine under one roof — a format particularly well suited to researchers whose work crosses traditional boundaries. Daniela Macari and Annalena Kofler are among a highly selective cohort of young scientists chosen from nominations worldwide to participate in this week of lectures, panel discussions, and personal exchange with some of science's most accomplished minds.

Find out more about the Meeting here.