The main areas of work are Radio- and Infrared Astronomy. Technological work at the institute covers the whole spectrum from radio-, via (sub)millimeter-, to infrared wavelengths. Research areas include star formation, stars in late stages of their evolution, pulsars, the interstellar medium of our Milky Way and external galaxies, the Galactic Center and its environment, magnetic fields in the universe, radio galaxies, quasars and other active galaxies, dust and gas at cosmological distances, galaxies in the early epochs of the universe, cosmic rays, astroparticle physics, and the theory of star formation and active galactic nuclei.

The institute is heavily involved in a number of large international projects:

  the US-German Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA)

  the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX): development and operation of a submillimeter telescope in the Atacama desert of Chile under MPIfR leadership

  the Far-Infrared and Submillimeter Telescope satellite observatory HERSCHEL (formerly known as FIRST),

  an upgrade of the Effelsberg 100-meter radio telescope,

  the conception of a next-generation radio telescope with a collecting area of one square kilometer (Square Kilometer Array, SKA),

  the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) in Chile (AMBER),

  the US-European Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona, and

  the continuation of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) to millimeter wavelengths and to extremely high angular resolution using antennas in space.