Barbara Huber is a Joachim Herz Foundation Add-On Fellow for Interdisciplinary Life Science. In her PhD research at the Max Planck Institute she studies old plant remains by using biochemical and biomolecular approches to find out how people used plants in the past

Rice is one of the most culturally valued and widely grown crops in the world today, and extensive research over the past decade has clarified much of the narrative of its domestication and early spread across East and South Asia. By better understanding the adoption of this water-demanding crop in the arid regions of West Asia, we explore an important chapter in human adaptation and agricultural decision making.
 

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Harvard, and PSL University, have designed a gaming applet where players compete to classify the letter shapes of the world's writing systems. Researchers will better understand how letter shapes evolve to be distinctive and informative thanks to this crowdsourced typology