Please contact Dr. Ulrike Boehm if you would like to participate or if you would like to suggest a suitable candidate. We reported about our initiative in the April issue of the Physikjournal in 2018. The German article can be found here.

Participants of previous years can be found here: 2018 and 2019. Our current initiative can be found here.

Weitere interessante Infomationen zum Thema Berufsvorbereitung für PhysikerInnen können auch auf den folgenden DPG Seiten gefunden werden:  Berufsvorbereitendes Programm der DPG und DPG-Berufsvorbereitung online der jDPG.

Dezember

Jun.Prof. Dr. Anna Grünebohm (Bochum) - Kalenderwoche 53

Anna is junior professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering, Ruhr-Universität Bochum and head of the group „Scale-Bridging Simulation of Functional Composites“ at the interdisciplinary centre for advanced materials simulation (ICAMS) [VIDEO]. Her group is funded by the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgruppe) within the Emmy-Noether programme and focuses on the relationship between microstructure and functional responses of ferroelectric materials. This year her work on the electrocaloric effect has been awarded with the NRW Innovationspreis 2020. The photo shows her typical working environment during the Corona pandemic: while she is virtually meeting her group, her kids do homeschooling behind the virtual background.

M.Sc. Aishwarya Girdhar (Garching/Munich) - Kalenderwoche 52

Aishwarya Girdhar is a second-year Ph.D. student at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in Garching b. Munich. Her interests include the study of galaxies and understanding how these galaxies evolve. For her Ph.D. research, under the supervision of Dr. Vincenzo Mainieri at ESO and Dr. Chris Harrison at the Newcastle University, she is studying a sample of galaxies that have active supermassive black holes at their center called the Active Galactic Nuclei. This galaxy-sample has observations in different wavelengths from ESO's ground-based observatories in Chile, The Very Large Telescope and ALMA, as well as from a space-based Indian observatory, the Astrosat. These black holes are seen to be accreting gas from the galaxy and releasing energy through outflows from the centers of the galaxy. Her research involves understanding these outflows and their effects on star formation in the host galaxy, i.e., the feedback to the galaxies.

Prof. Dr. Maryam Ebrahimi (Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada) - Kalenderwoche 51

Maryam worked as a Research Associate in the Surface and Interface Physics group (E20, Dr. Johannes Barth’s group), based at the Department of Physics at the Technical University of Munich. At the interface of physical chemistry, condensed-matter physics, and materials science, Maryam’s research focuses on the rational design and characterization of molecular-based and inorganic low-dimensional nanomaterials under ultra-high vacuum conditions. She employs high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy and non-contact atomic force microscopy with atomic scale resolution, and surface-sensitive spectroscopy techniques, complemented with theoretical simulations, to design one-atom thick nanomaterials with unique chemical and electronic properties. These materials span one-dimensional and two-dimensional polymers, metal-organic networks, quantum materials, covalent-organic frameworks, templated single-atom catalysts, and self-assembled molecular networks.

While establishing her independent group as a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Low-Dimensional Nanomaterials, Maryam continues to collaborate with her colleagues at E20, as a long-distance Visiting Scientist during the pandemic.

Prof. Dr. Andrea Ehrmann (Bielefeld) - Kalenderwoche 50

Andrea is a full professor for physics, measurement technology and textile technologies at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences in Germany. Working in a highly interdisciplinary field between physics, chemistry, biotechnology and materials science, she investigates electrospun nanofiber mats, properties of 3D printed composites, dye-sensitized solar cells, and diverse other topics along the textile chain and neighboring fields with her working group. Besides, she works on simulations of magnetic nanofibers, experimental investigations of magnetic thin-film systems and similar topics in the field of spintronics.
The photo shows Andrea preparing an electrospinning machine, used to produce nanoparticle-blended nanofiber mats, applied in dye-sensitized solar cells.

November

Dr. Hajnalka Nadasi (Magdeburg) - Kalenderwoche 49

Hajnalka is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Nonlinear Phenomena at the Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg. Her research focuses on Soft Matter such as liquid crystals, magnetic suspensions, and gels. Understanding the effects of the relationship between the nanoscale structure and dynamics on the macroscale properties of such materials enables the tailoring of smart materials for optics, biology, medicine, and engineering. She is especially interested in photomanipulation of liquid crystals and magnetic soft materials. She uses polarization and confocal microscopy as well as a photomodulation technique to study the induced structural and optical anisotropy by external stimuli.

M.Sc. Jasmin Pape (Göttingen) - Kalenderwoche 48

Jasmin is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of NanoBiophotonics at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. Under supervision of Nobel Laureate Stefan Hell she is working on the advancement of optical superresolution microscopy approaches to study biological mechanisms at the nanoscale. Together with her colleagues, Jasmin developed the MINFLUX nanoscopy approach for mapping proteins of different organelles with nanometer precision in all three dimensions and multiple color channels. To achieve such high precisions with conventional fluorophores, the researchers target the minimum of a doughnut-shaped excitation beam to positions very close to an emitting molecule. They can exploit the knowledge of beam position and beam shape, so that only few fluorescence photons are required to estimate the molecule position with nanometer-scale precision. The picture shows her at the microscope, aligning the beam path to achieve a perfect excitation beam shape.

Dr. Dominika Wylezalek (Heidelberg) - Kalenderwoche 47

Dominika is a DFG-funded Emmy-Noether Research Group Leader at the Zentrum für Astronomy (ZAH, Center for Astronomy) of the University of Heidelberg. Her research team GALENA (Galaxy Evolution and AGN) is focusing on the role of actively accreting supermassive black holes (active galactic nuclei: AGN) in galaxy evolution. While supermassive black holes are now thought to be hosted by every massive galaxy in the Universe, the energy output, i.e. feedback, from powerful actively growing supermassive black holes is now widely considered to be the the main driver in regulating the growth of massive galaxies and has become a major component in modern galaxy formation theories. She is primarily utilizing the power of optical and infrared integral field unit observations and sub-mm data from some of the largest ground- and space-based observatories for her work. She is particularly looking forward to the launch of the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope. Her team is one of 13 teams worldwide that will obtain and receive some of the first data taken with the JWST. Constraining the power, reach and impact of AGN feedback processes and finding concrete observational evidence for black hole/galaxy self-regulation is the main goal of Dominika's work. 

Dr. Camilla Juul Hansen (Heidelberg) - Kalenderwoche 46

Camilla is a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg. Her interests focus on observations and stellar spectroscopy where she derives chemical abundances and explore these in the intriguing framework of astro-nuclear-physics. Here she investigates the origin and the formation of the heavy elements from Sr and Ag to Au and the very heavy U which form via poorly known neutron-capture processes. Pinning down the nuclear formation processes in the universe as a function of time is a fascinating topic that she explores in remote Milky Way stars and its dwarf galaxies. She recently discovered the rapid neutron-capture element Th in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy for the first time. Explosive and transient events as detected by the gravitational-wave facilities spotted a blue kilonova in 2017 which was followed-up with ground-based telescopes that provided unique electromagnetic spectra. In these they found the first direct evidence that the rapid neutron-capture process indeed takes place in merging neutron stars.

Oktober

M.Sc. Lisa Ringena (Heidelberg) - Kalenderwoche 43

Lisa is a PhD student at the University of Heidelberg in the group of Markus Oberthaler. Her experiment aims to detect the extremely rare Argon 39 atom, which serves, due to its chemical inertness and half-life of 269 years, as a very useful tracer for environmental physics. The challenge is to distinguish this isotope from the huge background of abundant ones. The required selectivity is achieved by capturing Argon 39 inside a magneto-optical trap, which consists of six overlapping laser beams superimposed with a magnetic field. The electronic transition driven with the lasers differs between the isotopes, resulting in only the isotope of interest being captured. When not found in the lab, Lisa brings science to the stage, into local pubs or online. As a science slammer she talks about her experiences in her own research field; as a co-founder of the monthly Science Pub Quiz, she brings general science topics to anyone interested.

Prof. Dr. Andrea Ghez (Los Angeles, USA) - Kalenderwoche 42

Andrea is an American astronomer and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the center of the Milky Way galaxy. In 2020, she became the fourth woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, sharing one half of the prize with Reinhard Genzel (the other half of the prize being awarded to Roger Penrose). The Nobel Prize was awarded to Ghez and Genzel for their discovery of a supermassive compact object, now generally recognized to be a black hole, in the Milky Way's galactic center. 

Get inspired by her 2009 TED talk titled: "The hunt for a supermassive black hole".

M.Sc. Sabrina Patsch (Berlin) - Kalenderwoche 41

Sabrina is currently a PhD student in the group "Quantum dynamics and control" of Prof. Dr. Christiane Koch at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her work revolves around the usage of Rydberg atoms in quantum technologies. These are highly excited atoms with valuable properties for quantum technologies, such as a long lifetime and high sensitivity to electric and magnetic fields. In one of her projects, Sabrina uses optimal control theory to prepare Rydberg atoms in intricate, highly non-classical states which turn the atom into a powerful sensor for electric field measurements. In addition to conducting research, she enjoys taking her research out into the world, for instance, by doing Science Slams or writing articles on quantum physics for the general public on her own blog.

September

Prof. Dr. Monika Bessenrodt-Weberpals (Hamburg) - Kalenderwoche 40

Monika is a full-time Vice President and hence a member of the executive board of the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW Hamburg), northern Germany’s leading applied sciences university when it comes to reflective practice. As vice president, she is responsible for the central management and quality measures in higher education as well as in equal opportunity affairs. As a scientist fascinated by plasma physics, she is an associate professor for experimental physics at the Heinrich-Heine-University of Düsseldorf. Since Monika loves interdisciplinary research, she also has a chair on Physics and Gender Research at the HAW Hamburg. Her research focuses on evidence-based strategies and action plans to enhance gender equity in STEM fields.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr Juliane Borchert (Cambridge / Amsterdam) - Kalenderwoche 39

Juliane is a Postdoctoral Researcher on a joint project with the University of Cambridge and AMOLF research institute in Amsterdam. She fabricates and studies thin-films of metal halide perovskites using co-evaporation in vacuum. These perovskites are promising materials for the development of a new generation of efficient, cheap and flexible solar cells which are one puzzle piece for a solution to the climate change crisis. She makes thin-films of these materials which she uses to study their fundamental properties and to build test solar cells. She is particularly interested in how the perovskites interact with light to generate electricity. These materials and the insights she gains about them can also be used in other optoelectronic devices for example light emitting devices (LEDs) and photodetectors. The photo shows her in full cleanroom gear.

M.Sc. Lisa Susanna Fischer (Münster) - Kalenderwoche 38

Lisa is currently a PhD student in the research group for Quantitative Cell Biology of Prof. Carsten Grashoff at the Institute of Molecular Cell Biology at the University of Münster. She focused on super-resolution microscopy during her master thesis and PhD work at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPIB) near Munich. She is fascinated by the power of DNA-PAINT, where transient binding of dye-labeled DNA strands to their complementary target sequence attached to a molecule of interest allow a localization precision of ∼1nm. Lisa is working on the quantitative analysis of single molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) data and established a framework to quantify the localization of proteins with true molecular resolution in cells using DNA-PAINT – named quantitative single-molecule co-localization analysis (qSMCL). The technique combines single-protein resolution imaging with automated cluster detection and theoretical considerations allowing quantification of the absolute fraction of individual proteins actively engaged in molecular complex formation.

Jun. Prof. Daria Gorelova (Hamburg) - Kalenderwoche 37

Daria became a Junior Professor for Theoretical Physics at the Universität Hamburg in April, 2020. Her professorship and research group are funded by the Freigeist Fellowship of the Volkswagen Foundation. The group describes how photovoltaic materials in the regime of exciton dynamics interact with ultrashort light pulses. This description will provide tools to extract the finest details of exciton dynamics from signals obtained by means of ultrashort light pulses. Based on this analysis, her Freigeist Fellowship project "Seeing excitons in motion" aims to propose and design novel, cutting-edge experiments that will open up new perspectives for renewable energy research.

August

M.Sc. Jasmin Bedow (Chicago) - Kalenderwoche 36

Jasmin wrote her Master’s thesis at TU Dortmund University on topological superconductivity in magnet-superconductor hybrid systems. These systems are built from a superconducting substrate, onto which a layer of magnetic adatoms is deposited. The occurring Majorana zero modes in this type of system are promising candidates for future realizations of quantum computing, as they are robust towards local decoherence effects. During the process of writing her thesis, she completed a research phase of six months in the group of Prof. Dirk Morr at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Now, she is excited to start her PhD program at UIC, during which she hopes to continue her research on topological superconductivity.

Prof. Dr. Giulia Zanderighi (Munich) - Kalenderwoche 35

Prof. Dr. Giulia Zanderighi is a theoretical physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Physics (MPP) in Munich. She is an internationally recognized expert in the field of collider phenomenology. This theoretical discipline investigates elementary particles and their fundamental interactions, using mathematical models and calculations. These play a central role in particle physics: the greater the precision with which theoretical physicists calculate the behavior of elementary particles, the more information can be deduced from the data obtainable in accelerator experiments.

Phenomenology and high-precision calculations will have an even more important role to play in the future. In the near future, the LHC will be upgraded to a high-luminosity collider resulting in more particle collisions and therefore greater probability of discovering new physics in the data – i.e. phenomena that cannot be explained with the current Standard Model of particle physics.

Dr. Aneta Koseska (Bonn) - Kalenderwoche 34

Aneta is a Lise Meitner group leader at the Forschungszentrum caesar, which is associated with the Max Planck Society. She is fascinated by the physical principles of living matter and works at the interface between physics and biology. Combining nonlinear dynamics with experimental observations,  she and her team study how biochemical networks in living cells process in real-time the information about their changing environment and whether single cells can learn. Her goal is to develop a generic theory of biochemical computations and learning, and to identify to which extent the principles of biochemical and neuronal computations can be unified under the same dynamical framework.

Prof. Dr. Juliane König-Birk (Heilbronn) - Kalenderwoche 33

Juliane is the Dean of the Faculty Industrial and Process Engineering at Heilbronn University. The faculty consists of different master and bachelor courses such as production and process management, technical logistics management or process engineering. She holds a doctorate in physics in the field of nanooptics and surface physics. As Dean she is responsible for the organisation and supervision of teaching and the scientific facilities of the faculty. In addition to these tasks, Juliane herself gives physics lectures for engineers but also for children and organizes research workshops in order to awaken and maintain young people’s interest in physics and technology. Her field of research is the technical component cleanliness.

M.Sc. Katharina Dort (Giessen / Hamburg / Geneva) - Kalenderwoche 32

Katharina is a PhD student in the Experimental Physics department at CERN in affiliation with the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen. For her PhD, she works on the research and development of silicon pixel detectors for future high-energy physics experiments. The detectors are required to deliver simultaneous micrometer spatial and nanosecond timing information about charged particles while operating in a harsh radiation environment. For the assessment of novel detector prototypes, she tests the devices in simulations and particle beams at DESY and CERN. She is particularly fascinated about the interdisciplinary collaboration with engineers that her work offers as well as spin-off applications in medicine and related fields.

Juli

M.Sc. Eva-Maria Prexl (München) - Kalenderwoche 31

Eva is a PhD student at the Munich School of BioEngineering at the Technical University of Munich in the group of Biomedical Physics of Prof. Franz Pfeiffer. She studied physics at the Technical University of Munich and specialized on biomedical imaging at the interface between physics and medicine. In her PhD, she is working on potential clinical applications of grating-based X-ray imaging. The method uses an interferometer to simultaneously extract the conventional attenuation image, a phase image and a dark-field image from a single image acquisition. With this threefold image contrast it is possible to visualize many pathologies ranging from stroke over lung diseases to breast cancer among many others.

Dr. Alice Sandmeyer (Bielefeld) - Kalenderwoche 30

For her whole academic career, Alice was working in the “Biomolecular Photonics” Group of Prof. Dr. Thomas Huser at the University Bielefeld – from Bachelor to PhD and few months of PostDoc. For her PhD thesis, she focused her research on designing compact and cost-efficient fluorescence microscopes, which are used for biological and medical imaging. A fast 3D fluorescence microscope was even shipped to New York City to image the HIV infection pathway. Other scopes were capable of super-resolution imaging, so that structures below the diffraction limit could be resolved. In detail, a SOFI (Super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging) and a SIM (Structured Illumination Microscopy) microscope were built, whereas the last one is even capable of real-time reconstruction. All scopes were designed and built with cost efficiency in mind to facilitate the dissemination of super-resolution fluorescence microscopy techniques, so that more facilities can do advanced imaging.

M.Sc. Sudarshana Laha (Dresden) - Kalenderwoche 29

Sudarshana is currently a PhD student in the research group of Christoph A. Weber at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (MPI-PKS), Dresden. Her group ‘ Mesoscopic Physics of Life ’ is also affiliated with the Center for Systems Biology Dresden (CSBD). She is working in the field of theoretical biophysics, studying the interplay of liquid-liquid phase separation and biochemical reactions in biological systems. Recent studies have brought into prominence how membrane-less organelles are formed in cells governed by the physics of binary/multicomponent phase separation. Her goal is to broadly understand the dynamics of ongoing phase separation and biochemical reactions of molecules in such in vivo and in vitro systems.

M.Sc. Kristina Barragán Sanz (Bonn) - Kalenderwoche 28

Kristina is a PhD student at caesar, a neuroethology research institute in Bonn, which is associated with the Max Planck Society. In the group of Dr. Stephan Irsen, she works at the interface of physics, structural biology and neuroscience. For her PhD, she develops a novel type of phase plate, to enhance contrast in cryo-transmission electron microscopy. The goal of her PhD thesis is to visualize a high resolution structure of small proteins (<100kDa).

Juni

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Elke Neu-Ruffing (Kaiserslautern) - Kalenderwoche 27

Elke is an experimental physicist working interdisciplinary at the intersection of quantum technologies and biophysics. Since February 2020 she leads the Biophysics and Quantum Sensing group at University of Kaiserslautern. They are studying atomic-sized defects, so called color centers, in diamond as sensors. Their color centers are highly controllable quantum systems that enable to sense e.g. magnetic fields and optical near fields on the nanoscale. They are exploring to use these centers for biophysics where they can e.g. detect tiny currents occurring in living organisms.   

Dr. Silvia Viola Kusminskiy (Erlangen) - Kalenderwoche 26

Silvia is a theoretical physicist working at the intersection of condensed matter physics and quantum optics. She is the leader of the group Theory of Hybrid Quantum Systems at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light. With the help of her team, she studies the interaction between light and collective excitations in condensed matter systems at the micro/nanoscale, with emphasis on systems based on magnetic materials. Her goal is to learn how to tailor the interactions and the dynamics of these hybrid systems, in order to unravel quantum phenomena at unprecedented scales.

Prof. Dr. Ursula Wurstbauer (Münster) - Kalenderwoche 25

Ursula is an experimental solid state physicist and professor at the Institute of Physics at Münster University. The group focuses on exploring the optical and electronic properties of two-dimensional materials, related hetero- and hybrid structures and solid-state based nanosystems with special emphasize on emergent quantum states, interaction driven phenomena and collective behavior. To investigate those systems, the group uses state-of the art nanofabrication, various optical spectroscopy and microscopy techniques complemented with magnetotransport experiments in a full temperature range down to a few millikelvins.

Dr. Wiebke Jahr (Klosterneuburg / Vienna) - Kalenderwoche 24

Wiebke is a HFSP postdoctoral fellow working on optical microscopy beyond the diffraction limit in the Danzl group / IST Austria. In STimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscopy, fluorescent molecules are excited with a regularly focused laser beam. A second laser beam featuring intensity minima (e.g. “donut”-shaped) switches fluorescence off. The signaling volume is not defined by diffraction anymore, but confined by the STED laser. Spatial details in the range of 10s of nm are resolvable using visible light. Wiebke’s work is directly at the interface of physics (optics development) and the life sciences. She finds it exciting how technical improvements in the measurement process directly translate into a deeper understanding of biological processes. The photo shows Wiebke aligning the fluorescence excitation module of a homebuilt STED microscope.

Prof. Dr. Kathy Lüdge (Berlin) - Kalenderwoche 23

Kathy is a Professor at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the TU Berlin. Her research interests are lasers, optical networks and nonlinear dynamics. Within her group, semi-analytic delay-differential equations and bifurcation theory are used to describe and optimize the emission characteristics of optical devices. Applications lie in the area of data communication which are explored in strong collaboration with experimental groups around the world. During a Humboldt fellowship 2017 in New Zealand (picture) she built strong connections to the University of Auckland and experienced scientific mobility with a family of four. Recently, she also works on laser networks for machine learning applications, which opens exciting possibilities for fast and energy efficient all-optical computing.

Mai

Dr. Miriam Rengel (Göttingen) - Kalenderwoche 22

Miriam is an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany. Her primary focus is planetary atmospheres (in the Solar System and beyond) and atmospheric remote sensing of solar system objects. She carries out observations for her research using numerous observatories and facilities, both ground and space-based, and develops and implements radiative transfer codes to interpret the data and retrieve parameters like temperature and composition. She currently works for the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) and its Submillimetre Wave Instrument (SWI), a European Space Agency (ESA) mission which will explore Jupiter and three of its icy moons.

Prof. Dr. Regina Hoffmann-Vogel (Potsdam-Golm) - Kalenderwoche 21

Regina is the Head of the Experimental Physics of Condensed Matter group and Professor at the Institute of Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Potsdam. The main goal of her research group is to understand the relation between atomic and mesoscopic structure and to understand electronic transport of nanostructures. To investigate the structure of their research objects they use scanning force microscopy. To fabricate small contacts, they use electromigration.

 

 

 

B.Sc. Florina Schalamon (Mainz) - Kalenderwoche 20

Florina is a meteorology masters student at the Johannes-Gutenberg University Mainz and did an ERASMUS semester at UNIS in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. This is a great place to learn a lot about snow and ice as everything is just in front of the doorstep. For her first, but hopefully not last, arctic fieldwork they measured with a ground penetrating radar the snow depth of glaciers. It is important to be able to monitor the mass balance of the glacier and study the development over time. Besides studying to become an arctic researcher,  she is the board member for international relation of the Young German Physical Society and tries to encourage others to make their own experiences abroad.

Prof. Dr. Karen Alim (Göttingen / München) - Kalenderwoche 19

Karen is a Professor at the Physics Department at the Technical University of Munich and a Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization. She is fascinated by life and in particular by how shapes and patterns are formed. Her group combines experiment and theoretical physics to unravel how fluid flows and mechanical forces self-organise the architecture of vascular networks and the shapes of organs. 

April

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Susanne Westhoff (Heidelberg) - Kalenderwoche 18

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Susanne Westhoff is a theoretical particle physicist at Heidelberg University. With her research group she searches for signs of dark matter and other kinds of new physics at particle colliders. Susanne loves working directly with experimentalists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to invent new data analyses together. Now that her daily work is mostly confined to her kitchen table, she wishes she was at the Aspen Center for Theoretical Physics in Aspen, Colorado, where physicists from around the world like to spend their summer discussing new research ideas - and climbing the Rockies.

Dr. Christina Eilers (Boston, MA) - Kalenderwoche 17

Christina is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. She studies the early formation and growth of supermassive black holes that reside at the center of all massive galaxies in the universe. By using some of the largest optical and near-infrared telescopes on Earth, which are located on top of a dormant volcano in Hawaii and in the middle of the Atacama desert in Chile, she observes distant, very luminous galaxies, so-called quasars, that are powered by accretion onto their supermassive black holes. The light of these quasars has traveled billions of years before it reaches our telescopes on Earth and thus allows astronomers a glimpse into the past history of our universe. 

M.Sc. Najd Altwaijry (Garching/Munich) - Kalenderwoche 16

Najd studied physics at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and obtained her MSc in physics with work performed at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching. Now, she is a PhD student in the Max Planck School of Photonics within the group of Prof. Matthias Kling at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. She is working on a next generation Ultrabroadband Field Synthesizers and using ultrashort light pulses for investigating ultrafast processes in solids in the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics.

Dr. Ann-Kathrin Schütz (Tübingen) - Kalenderwoche 15

Ann-Kathrin is currently a postdoc for data analysis at the GERDA experiment located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) in Italy. The GERmanium Detector Array (Gerda) experiment aims for the discovery of neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) decay in 76Ge. The neutrinoless double beta decay is presently the only feasible way to reveal the Majorana nature of neutrinos, i.e. if neutrinos are their own anti-particles. GERDA aims to discover this process in a background-free search using 76Ge. Since reducing the background is one of the major challenges for 0vbb experimental searches, the goal of Ann-Kathrin's work is a detailed study of the background and the development of a comprehensive model describing the experimental energy spectra measured with GERDA.

März

M.Sc. Katharina Kolatzki (Zürich, Switzerland) - Kalenderwoche 14

Katharina is a PhD student in the newly founded group of Prof. Dr. Daniela Rupp at ETH Zürich. She obtained her Bachelor's and Master's degree from TU Berlin, where she started working in the field of nanoparticles and their ultrafast interactions with intense X-ray pulses. In Zürich, she continues this work, currently building a source for liquid helium droplets which are created via the controlled breakup of a liquid helium jet.

Dr. Marie Walde (Roscoff, France) - Kalenderwoche 13

Marie is a biophysicist with a doctoral degree in microscopy and biomedical imaging from the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena.

She specialized in advanced fluorescence microscopy and enjoys interdisciplinary work that uses cutting-edge optics and imaging methods to answer biological questions.

Marie currently works as a postdoctoral researcher for the CNRS/Sorbonne Université at the Station Biologique de Roscoff, France. Her research here focuses on automated multicolor 3D microscopy and machine learning-based image classification to study symbioses and biodiversity in marine plankton.

B.Sc. Lara Grabitz (Heidelberg) - Kalenderwoche 12

Lara is a master's student at the University of Heidelberg. During her Bachelor thesis in theoretical particle physics, she looked at Di-Higgs production processes to study physics beyond the Standard Model. These processes are especially interesting as they have not yet been measured at the LHC due to the low cross section. Besides her studies Lara is passionate about science networking and education. She is a committee member of the German Network of Young Scientists and holds the committee position for education at the young German Physical Society.

Dr. Vanessa Graber (Barcelona) - Kalenderwoche 11

Vanessa is a theoretical astrophysicist who investigates different aspects of neutron stars physics, the densest objects in our Universe. One of her main research interests focuses on the interface between astrophysics and condensed matter physics, specifically the implications of so-called superfluid and superconducting components on observable parameters. The interdisciplinary nature of this research is one of Vanessa's main reasons for studying neutron stars. As a senior postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) in Barcelona, Vanessa recently started working on a new project related to the population synthesis of isolated neutron stars.

Dr. Flore Kunst (Garching/Munich) - Kalenderwoche 10

Flore finished her PhD at Stockholm University last year, where she worked on non-interacting topological phases in various contexts. The unifying feature of such phases is the existence of robust, electronic states on the boundaries, and during her PhD she worked on developing a method with which to find exact solutions to describe the wave functions of states. More recently, she started looking at the effects of dissipation in these models, which leads to many new exotic features. She will continue working on such nonequilibrium topological phases both in the single-particle limit as well as the many-body case during her time as a Max-Planck-Harvard Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics.

Februar

M. Sc. Charlotte Beelen (Oldenburg) - Kalenderwoche 9

Charlotte is a PhD student at the university of Oldenburg in the DFG research training group "Molecular basis of sensory biology". She is working on a computational model of the first step in vision: a biochemical signalling cascade that takes place in rod cells in the eye. This interdisciplinary approach at the interface of physics, chemistry and biology allows a comprehensive description of the signalling cascade and predictions of its behaviour in different conditions, e.g. different light stimuli or a genetic mutation leading to a disease. Astonishingly, rod cells can detect single photons, and thus operate at the physical measurement limit. Charlotte and her collaborators are performing stochastic simulations to understand the statistics of this phenomenon.

Prof. Dr. Laura Na Liu (Heidelberg) - Kalenderwoche 8

Laura is a Professor at the Kirchhoff-Institute for Physics at the Heidelberg University. She works at the interface between nanophotonics, biology, and chemistry. Her group focuses on developing sophisticated and smart optical nanosystems for answering structural biology questions as well as catalytic chemistry questions in local environments.

Prof. Dr. Claudia Eberlein (Loughborough, UK) - Kalenderwoche 7

Claudia is a Professor of Theoretical Physics and Dean of the School of Science at Loughborough University. Her research involves the application of quantum field theory to nanotechnology. Charged or polarizable quantum systems interact with the quantized electromagnetic field which leads to quantum corrections, e.g. the Lamb shift in atoms or the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron. This interaction is affected by the presence of material boundaries that reflect, refract, or absorb light, and this causes spatial variations in these quantum corrections that can be exploited for nanotechnology. However, after three decades of research in this field, Claudia now spends most of her time leading the School of Science, which comprises 5 academic disciplines and includes 240 staff and 2200 students, and contributing to the leadership and management of Loughborough University.

Dr. Almut Beige (Leeds, UK) - Kalenderwoche 6

Almut is the Head of the Theoretical Physics group at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. Since completing her PhD at the University of Goettingen, Almut has been fascinated with the often very strange implications of quantum physics. Already in 2000, she used such implications to design more efficient quantum computing schemes in open quantum systems. Some of her ideas are currently implemented in labs worldwide. Recently, Almut's groups became fascinated by quantum photonics and tries to better understand different ways of seeing light.

Januar

Dr. Elisa Palacino González (Berlin) - Kalenderwoche 5

Elisa Palacino González holds a doctoral degree from the Technical University of Munich in the area of Theoretical Nonlinear Optical Spectroscopy of molecules. One of the main goals in her PhD work was the development of methods for the simulation and interpretation of nonlinear optical spectroscopic signals in the UV region, as an approach to understand the ultrafast nuclear dynamics of nontrivial model systems. Now she is working as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Born-Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short-Pulse Spectroscopy in Berlin, where she is focused on the combined application of ab initio calculations and QM/MM methods with the simulation of nonlinear optical IR spectra to explain the mechanisms behind the photoinduced dynamics of molecules in solvated environments.

Prof. Dr. Daniela Rupp (Zürich) - Kalenderwoche 4

Daniela and her group at ETH Zurich investigate the structure and dynamics of nanoparticles. Using intense X-ray flashes, they take snapshots of individual nanoparticles in free flight by light scattering – this is called coherent diffraction imaging. For their experiments, they either travel to huge X-ray free-electron lasers or use high-intensity laboratory lasers to generate short-wave light pulses. With coherent diffraction imaging, it has become possible to investigate the structure of fragile nanostructures that cannot be deposited and introduced into an electron microscope. In addition, the ultra-short pulses allow for obtaining movies of extremely fast dynamics in these small particles. The investigations help gaining new insights into the processes leading to structure formation and developing a better understanding and control of the interaction of intense X-ray pulses with matter. 

Hier geht es zu den Teilnehmerinnen der Physikerin der Woche 2018 und 2019 Projekte.