The workshop primarily focuses on particle-based models of collective interaction in systems that are driven far from equilibrium, either by external or by internal forces.

In externally driven many-particle systems, the ongoing competition between the driving forces and the dissipative friction forces leads to a spatio-temporal redistribution of energy, which produces a great variety of self-organization phenomena. This results from non-linearities in the equations of motion, which allow small initial perturbations to be enhanced and non-equilibrium patterns to be dynamically stabilized. In fluids, this may lead to the formation of waves or vortices, while in vibrated granular media, one can find emergent convection patterns, collective oscillating states (so-called oscillons), spontaneous segregation of different granular materials or self-organized criticality with power-law distributed avalance sizes.

Other kinds of phenomena such as ``freezing by heating'' or noise-induced ordering are observed in self-driven many-particle systems, where the driving force is not of external origin (exerted from outside), but associated with each single particle and self-produced. This requires each particle to have some kind of internal energy reservoir. Self-driven ``particles'' are nowadays a paradigm for many active or living systems, where they are a simplified and abstract representation of the dynamic behavior of cells, animals, or even humans.

While most many-particle systems have to be studied numerically, particle hopping models allow for analytical insights into their basic properties and non-equilibrium phase transitions due to the simplifying (minimal) model assumptions they make. In recent years, also experimental studies of self-driven many-particle systems other than traffic systems are carried out, for example, in gravitationally driven granular flows, flows of charged granular particles, or colloidal particles in suspensions exposed to electrical fields.