“Why is the world that surrounds us so complex while the underlying laws of physics are simple?” This fundamental question has vast ramifications. Think of clouds in the sky, spraying waves of the oceans, or an ice rose formed on your window a winter morning: Although the water molecules are simple in shape and interact by simple forces, they can grow into amazingly complex patterns. This illustrates processes that are simple step by step, but when repeated, can result in complexity where “the whole is different from the sum of its many parts”.

Complex matter science deals with condensed matter systems showing complex patterns of behaviour in a broad sense of the word. It aims to uncover the physical reasons for complexity, and capture the drama and richness caused by tiny variations and perturbations. During the past year at CAS, these have been the overall goals of our group, where the concrete work had strong links to experimental activities taking place in parallel at the physics departments of the University of Oslo, NTNU and IFE. Examples of systems we have studied are granular matter, vortices and instabilities in superconducting materials, complex fluids, polymers, flow in porous media and quantum systems in complex environment.

Thus, the project has promoted synergy in several directions and at several levels. Of special importance has been the added value created by bringing high-level scientists and their students from several institutions, nationally and internationally, together to work on selected topics in complex matter science, and thereby promoting Norway’s reputation as an attractive environment for scientific excellence and education.

We consider our year at CAS as extremely productive and memorable in all respects. Being allowed to concentrate fully on research in such a friendly, inspiring atmosphere, and with the highly professional assistance from the CAS staff, the year became unique. In addition to our output in the form of scientific papers published and submitted, the value of being in a position to host large international workshops should also be emphasized. It is evident that all our activities will be beneficial far into the future.

During the year at CAS, several applications were written and submitted to various international agencies aiming to continue the close collaborations initiated by the CAS project. Three of them have been granted all ready; one EU-project (STREP) and two Science without Borders (Brazil) projects. Therefore many initiatives created at CAS will for sure grow further.