Physikerin der Woche 2021

Seit Januar 2018 stellt Ihnen der Arbeitskreis Chancengleichheit der DPG wöchentlich eine Physikerin in einem kurzen Bericht vor.

Möchten Sie selbst Ihr Forschungsgebiet vorstellen oder wollen Sie eine Physikerin in Deutschland oder eine deutsche Physikerin im Ausland (Bachelorstudentin, Masterstudentin, Doktorandin, Postdoktorandin, Gruppenleiterin, Professorin - Physikerinnen aller Karrierestufen können sich beteiligen) für unser Physikerin der Woche Projekt vorschlagen, dann kontaktieren Sie bitte Frau Dr. Ulrike Boehm .

Einen Artikel und Poster über unsere Aktion finden Sie in der 2018 April-Ausgabe bzw. der 2021 Februar- und 2022 Januar-Ausgabe des Physik-Journals der DPG. Um mehr Physikerinnen für unsere Initiative zu gewinnen, können Sie die Poster gerne ausdrucken und in Ihrem Institut am schwarzen Brett anbringen.

Unsere Teilnehmerinnen aus den letzten Jahren finden Sie hier: 2018, 2019 und 2020.

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

Prof. Dr. Alessandra Buonanno (Potsdam) - Kalenderwoche 52

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Alessandra is a theoretical physicist and a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Potsdam. She leads the “Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity” Department, which spans from theory to observation through the analysis of experimental data. Her research focuses on developing highly-accurate models of gravitational waves emitted by binary systems composed of black holes and/or neutron stars. Her group and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration routinely employ these models to infer astrophysical, cosmological, and fundamental physics information from the observed gravitational waves. Alessandra and her team are also doing research for future gravitational-wave experiments, which will open new frequency windows in space (LISA) and on the ground (Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer). The opening of new frequency bands has always led to remarkable, radical discoveries of our Universe, as witnessed in electromagnetic astronomy. Alessandra expects it to happen also for gravitational-wave astronomy

Foto-Rechte: D. Ausserhofer

Prof. Dr. Christine Silberhorn (Paderborn) - Kalenderwoche 51

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Christine is a professor at Paderborn University and works in the field of experimental quantum photonics. She and her group develop novel integrated-optical quantum devices and build optical systems that lay the foundations for future quantum computers in quantum communication and metrology.
Her research includes the fabrication of integrated optical waveguides, the construction of practical systems, and the realization of complex experiments in the quantum optics laboratory.

Foto-Rechte: Prof. Dr. Christine Silberhorn

Prof. Dr. Dr. Livia Ludhova (Jülich) - Kalenderwoche 50

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Livia is a W2 Professor at the Physics Institute IIIB, RWTH Aachen University and head of a dynamic international neutrino group at IKP-2, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. Livia started her current position in 2015 as a winner of the recruitment initiative of the Helmholtz Association. Livia is originally from Slovakia and has a double education in metamorphic petrology and experimental physics. Since 2005 she has worked in the field of low-energy neutrino physics with large-volume liquid-scintillator detectors. Borexino experiment, located at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, measures solar neutrinos emitted in the fusion reactions powering our Sun and geoneutrinos, emitted in radioactive decays of Thorium and Uranium deep in our Earth. The European Physical Society has awarded the 2021 Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize to the Borexino Collaboration for the ground-breaking observation of solar neutrinos from the pp chain and CNO cycle that provided unique and comprehensive tests of the Sun as a nuclear fusion engine. Livia is currently a physics co-coordinator of the Borexino experiment. Livia applies her experience also in the JUNO experiment - the “big brother” of Borexino with an extraordinary mass of 20 kton that is under construction in South China and has multiple goals in the field of neutrino and astroparticle physics.

Foto-Rechte: Forschungszentrum Jülich /Ralf-Uwe Limbach

Prof. Dr. Cornelia Monzel (Düsseldorf) - Kalenderwoche 49

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Cornelia is a professor for Experimental Medical Physics at Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf and a Freigeist-Fellow of Volkswagen Foundation. Her research focuses on determining the physical parameters, which give rise to signal formation in cells. Among these parameters are molecular interaction forces, local concentration thresholds, or their spatio-temporal dynamics within cells. Cornelia and her group apply microscopy techniques with single-molecule detection sensitivity combined with nanoscale agents such as Quantum Dots or DNA Origami to detect these processes. To actively alter a particular cell signal, the group further develops a magnetic manipulation approach (Magnetogenetics), where superparamagnetic nanoparticles are coupled to a protein of interest. The proteins are then spatially redistributed with microscale tailored magnetic fields, thereby generating a new signal inside the cell. The photo shows Cornelia in front of her microscope used for single-molecule tracking.

Foto-Rechte: Christoph Kawan für HHU

November

M.Sc. Laura Weber (Bonn) - Kalenderwoche 48

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Laura is working as a Ph.D. student in the group of Prof. Ulrike Endesfelder at the Institute of Microbiology and Biotechnology at the University of Bonn. She is very enthusiastic about interdisciplinary research and enjoys working at the frontier of physics and biology. Combining tools and techniques from different natural sciences offers her unique research opportunities and allows her to answer new, exciting research questions. Her Ph.D. project focuses on microbiological systems and the development of a dynamic simulator for Single-Molecule Localization Microscopy experiments. Before joining the Endersfelder group, Laura designed and built a lattice light-sheet fluorescence microscope for imaging large samples such as expanded mice brain slices during her master's thesis. Besides her studies, Laura is also a very active member of the Physics Show Bonn, an outreach project of the University of Bonn under the lead of Prof. Herbert Dreiner and Michael Kortmann. Together with other students, Laura is organizing, developing, and performing exciting science shows on stage. These shows typically include fun demonstration experiments to explain physics to the general audience (see photo). Recently, Laura has been awarded the initiative prize of the university society Bonn for the Christmas Physics Show 2020 along with her team members.

Foto-Rechte: Volker Lannert

Dr. Natalie Hanrieder (Cologne-Porz, Tabernas) - Kalenderwoche 47

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Natalie is an atmospheric physicist with a Ph.D. in Meteorology. She works at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) within the Institute for Solar Research in Cologne-Porz (Germany) and in the group of Solar Energy Meteorology at CIEMATs Plataforma Solar de Almería in Southern Spain. She dedicates her research to the evaluation of meteorological effects on solar power plants within different national and international projects. Her research is focused on the demand of the solar industry. The development of, e.g., a forecasting model to predict the soiling of solar collectors to optimize the solar plant cleaning strategy or of a measurement system to determine the attenuation of solar irradiance by aerosol particles in solar tower plants are examples of her research interests. Further, she maintains strong collaborations with research partners, for example, in Northern Africa, the Middle East, and India, and lectured at several capacity-building courses about solar radiation properties and measurements, data quality control, site analysis, and solar resource assessment. The picture shows Natalie at CIEMATs sunny PSA in Almería (Spain) next to a pyranometer that measures the incoming global irradiance.

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Natalie Hanrieder

M.Sc. Olga Baladron-Zorita (Jena) - Kalenderwoche 46

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Olga, a physicist by education, works as a Senior Optical Engineer at the company LightTrans International GmbH in Jena. At the same time, she is pursuing her Ph.D. in the Applied Computational Optics Group of the Institute of Applied Physics at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena under the guidance of Prof. Frank Wyrowski. Both occupations revolve, in different ways, around the subject of physical-optics simulations of optical systems. Her research work is particularly interested in “quirky” physical optics effects, such as the Gouy phase shift.

 

 

Foto-Rechte: M.Sc. Olga Baladron-Zorita

Dr. Maddalena Cataldo (Erlangen) - Kalenderwoche 45

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Maddalena is a postdoctoral researcher at the Erlangen Center for Astroparticle Physics (ECAP). She works in the field of radio detection of astrophysical and cosmogenic neutrinos, namely in the collaborations of RNO-G (Radio Neutrino Observatory in Greenland) and IceCube Gen2 - Radio.

RNO-G is a neutrino detector located at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet composed of 35 radio stations. Its first deployment season took place in the Summer of 2021, and the entire detector will be constructed over the next three years. It will explore mainly the Northern sky via an in-ice radio detection technique. The antennas will register radio signals produced by the Askaryan effect in cascades generated in the ice by incoming neutrinos. It is a precursor and complementary detector for IceCube Gen2 - Radio that will be constructed in the upcoming years at the South Pole. IceCube Gen2 - Radio is the next generation of IceCube (currently the largest Čerenkov neutrino detector). Radio detectors’ scientific purpose is to observe ultra-high-energy neutrinos, a regime out of reach via traditional optical methods. The attenuation length of radio waves in ice (order of km) allows for this unique detection method.

In the ECAP laboratory, Maddalena conducts the assembly and low-temperature testing of the different amplifiers of the radio antennas. Her research is also focused on sharpening the science cases by conducting detector sensitivity studies and exploring the possible observable sources of these high energetic neutrinos such as tidal-disruptive events, GRBs, compact-object mergers, or core-collapse Supernovae.

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Maddalena Cataldo

Dr. Selma E. de Mink (Garching/Munich) - Kalenderwoche 44

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Selma started earlier this year as a new director at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics after being a professor at Harvard University. She is most known for her work on binary systems, pairs of stars that interact, as can be seen in the artist's impression behind her. Her new department will be investigating the lives and deaths of stars.

 

 

Foto-Rechte: Dirk Gillissen

Oktober

Dr. Anthoula Papageorgiou (Garching/Munich) - Kalenderwoche 42

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Anthoula is a surface science lecturer at the Technical University of Munich. Her group's research focuses on the organized assembly and reaction of small organic molecules on solid surfaces to ultimately create functional materials. With her colleagues, she creates and investigates model systems in an ultra-high vacuum. Their techniques of choice are scanning tunneling and atomic force microscopy combined with X-ray spectroscopy, often using European synchrotron facilities. The photo was taken during Anthoula's postdoctoral time at the University of Cambridge and shows her manipulating a sample in an ultra-high vacuum scanning tunneling microscope. Prior to Munich and Cambridge, she earned her Ph.D. from University College London, studying titania nanostructures.

 

Foto-Rechte: Caroline Hancox and Nathan Pitt

Prof. Dr. Sherry H. Suyu (Garching/Munich) - Kalenderwoche 41

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Sherry is a Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, an Assistant Professor at the Technical University of Munich, and a Visiting Scholar at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics. She uses the spectacular phenomenon of gravitational lensing, the bending of light by gravity, to probe the dark cosmos: dark energy, dark matter, and supermassive black holes. She also works on the extremely bright side of the Universe in observing splendid cosmic fireworks from supernovae. Sherry has led the H0LiCOW program that measured the expansion rate of our Universe using gravitationally lensed quasars. With the support from the European Research Council through a Consolidator Grant, she is launching a new program on lensed supernovae: HOLISMOKES

Foto-Rechte: Astrid Eckert / TUM

Prof. Dr. Veronika Eyring (Bremen/Oberpfaffenhofen-Wessling) - Kalenderwoche 40

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Veronika is Head of the Earth System Model Evaluation and Analysis Department at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Atmospheric Physics and Professor of Climate Modelling at the University of Bremen. She maintains a strong collaboration with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR, USA) as Affiliate Scientist, with the DLR Climate Informatics Group in Jena that she founded in 2017, and with the team of the European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant on "Understanding and Modelling the Earth System with Machine Learning (USMILE)." Veronika's research focuses on Earth system modeling and process-oriented model evaluation and analysis, including artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, to improve climate projections and technology assessments. She has authored many peer-reviewed journal articles and has contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate assessments for many years, including her role as Coordinating Lead Author for Chapter 3, "Human influence on the climate system" in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report of Working Group I published in 2021. Veronika has been involved in the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) for many years, for example, through her roles as Chair of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) Panel (2014-2020) and member of scientific steering committees, including the Working Group on Coupled Modeling (WGCM) from 2008-2018. She was PI of the Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) until 2020 and has been a member of the European Lab for Learning & Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) since 2019. Veronika received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2021 for her significant contributions to improving the understanding and accuracy of climate projections through process-oriented modeling and model evaluation.

Foto-Rechte: DLR / Philip Hallay

September

Prof. Dr. Christine M. Papadakis (Munich) - Kalenderwoche 39

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Christine is a professor in experimental soft matter physics at the Technical University of Munich. Her research focuses on polymers of complex architecture, responsive polymers, block copolymers, and polymers for drug delivery. Using scattering methods, also in a time-resolved manner, her group investigates structures of polymer systems and their changes during rapid changes of the environment. Using neutron spectroscopy, they characterize the interactions between polymers and solvent molecules. The photo shows Christine in the research reactor Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum of TUM, where the group often conducts experiments. During her Ph.D. at the University of Roskilde and her postdoctoral stay at Risø National Laboratory, both in Denmark, she investigated block copolymers using small-angle scattering and light scattering. Before joining TUM in 2003, she did her habilitation at the University of Leipzig, where she studied block copolymer solutions and thin films.

Foto-Rechte: Prof. Dr. Christine M. Papadakis

Dr. E. Liliana Macotela (Kühlungsborn) - Kalenderwoche 38

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Liliana is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Rostock, working at the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Kühlungsborn. Her research focuses on the dynamics of winds, solar tides, and neutral temperatures in the mesosphere. This topic is part of an effort to understand a new phenomenon in the D-region that she and her team discovered in 2020. They named this phenomenon “the fall-effect,” which is observed as an increase in the received very low frequency (VLF) radio signal amplitude during fall when compared to the received amplitude during spring. Liliana is also interested in studying the ionospheric D-region behavior under the influence of different phenomena located in space (e.g., solar flares, gamma-ray bursts) or at Earth (e.g., lightning emissions), and the highest frequency range of VLF emissions coming from the magnetosphere.

Liliana has recently been awarded the MSCA-IF (Marie Curie grant) to work on the D-region and magnetospheric topics using the VLF wave propagation. As part of this grant, she will work at the University of Bath, UK, from next year (2022).

Foto-Rechte: Dr. E. Liliana Macotela

M.Sc. Anne Matthies (Cologne) - Kalenderwoche 37

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Anne completed her Bachelor's and Master's studies in Erlangen, where she explored the effects of non-equilibrium currents on phase transitions with Prof. Martin Eckstein as a research assistant.
Interested in brain research, she spent one year as a DAAD scholar at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. There, as her Master's project with Asst. Prof. Shanon Kolind, Anne investigated how magnetic resonance imaging can help to track brain damage in multiple sclerosis patients.
Still fascinated by the versatility and richness of non-equilibrium systems, she subsequently joined the group of Prof. Achim Rosch at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Cologne for her Ph.D. In her latest project, she explores how one can efficiently realize stable topological qubits using a periodic drive.
After various stays abroad, Anne is still curious to explore new countries and languages. Therefore, she is excited to visit Prof. Erez Berg at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel for six months as part of her Ph.D. studies. To share her love of physics and inspire other young women, Anne has engaged in many outreach activities.

Foto-Rechte: M.Sc. Anne Matthies

Prof. Dr. Astrid Kiendler-Scharr (Jülich) - Kalenderwoche 36

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Astrid is a scientific director of the Institute of Energy and Climate Research, IEK-8: Troposphere, at Forschungszentrum Jülich and a professor for experimental physics at Cologne University. IEK-8 investigates chemistry-climate interactions on a global to regional scale. It performs experimental studies of the atmospheric self-cleaning, with particular emphasis on the link between gas-phase oxidation processes and the formation and aging of aerosols. Research at IEK-8 also includes long-term observations of the atmosphere and model simulations of the complex chemistry and transport in the lower troposphere and its interaction with the Earth system. IEK-8 aims for an improved understanding and contributes data needed for assessing the connections between air quality and climate change. Astrid is a lead author in the IPCC 6th Assessment Report Working Group 1: The Physical Science Basis and chair of the board of the German Climate Consortium (DKK).

Foto-Rechte: Prof. Dr. Astrid Kiendler-Scharr

August

Prof. Dr. Bella Lake (Berlin) - Kalenderwoche 35

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Bella is a professor in condensed matter physics at the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin and the Technical University Berlin. She heads the Institute of Quantum Phenomena in Novel Materials and investigates materials whose properties are strongly influenced by quantum mechanics.  In particular, she focuses on emergent phenomena in quantum magnets, unconventional superconductors, and strongly correlated electron systems. Recent work has achieved insights into highly entwined parameters such as superconductivity, charge, orbital, and spin orders in transition metal oxides. She also explores exotic quantum states in spin chains and spin ladders and the effect of quantum fluctuations in highly frustrated magnets, which can lead to new states of matter such as the quantum spin liquid.

 

Foto-Rechte: Prof. Dr. Bella Lake

M.Sc. Kirsten M Florentine Weber (Sheffield, UK) - Kalenderwoche 33

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Kirsten is a Ph.D. student at the Grantham Center for Sustainable Future at the University of Sheffield, UK. Her research investigates the roles of atmospheric processes and vegetation feedbacks and their implications for future climate change.

Climate change is a long-term shift in the properties of our atmosphere. One of these properties is relative humidity. Relative humidity describes the amount of water vapor in the air, relative to the temperature of the air. Dry air has low relative humidity, while fog has high relative humidity. Observation data shows that relative humidity is decreasing globally over land since the year 2000, especially in regions of mid-latitudes.

Kirsten's project will be exploring three possible causes, or drivers, for declining near-surface relative humidity over land: (1) Dynamical drivers, so-called modes of variability (e.g., wind and pressure pattern), (2) Thermodynamical drivers (temperature and, consequently, greenhouse gases), and (3) Land-based drivers (transpiration of plants and large-scale land cover changes, such as deforestation).

She works with global monitoring products and earth observation data for land use, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture. Furthermore, she will also be using computer simulations based on this data, and ecosystem studies. She hopes to find out more about water, the fundamental element for life, and the representation of atmosphere-land exchange processes in climate models that predict the future.

The photo shows her measuring the relative humidity on the mountain Goat Fell on the Isle of Arran (Scotland).

Foto-Rechte: M.Sc. Kirsten M Florentine Weber

Dr. Miriam Brosi (Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen/Karlsruhe) - Kalenderwoche 32

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Miriam is a postdoctoral researcher at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Karlsruhe and works at the Institute for Beam Physics and Technology with the Karlsruhe Research Accelerator (KARA).
Her research focuses on the dynamics and instabilities of picosecond-short, ultra-relativistic electron packages in synchrotron light sources.
For special operation modes pushing the light sources to all performance frontiers, one of the main limitations but, at the same time, the most interesting features are instabilities arising from the extreme conditions.
During her Ph.D. thesis, she studied the intricate effects of longitudinal micro-bunching instability. This was vastly sped up by her development of a new measurement method that reduces the measurement duration by a factor of 10000 and now allows a snapshot of the prevailing dynamics to be taken within just one second.

Miriam has been awarded the Helmholtz doctoral prize 2020 for the best doctoral thesis in the research field Matter (one of the six Helmholtz research fields).

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Miriam Brosi

Dr. Elisabeth Fischer-Friedrich (Dresden) - Kalenderwoche 31

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Since November 2019, Elisabeth is a group leader for Mechanics of Active Biomaterials at the Cluster of Excellence Physics of Life (PoL) at the Technische Universität Dresden. Her research group combines biological experiments at the cellular and tissue level with theoretical physics to uncover principles by which active molecular units lead to dynamic intracellular force generation and cellular shape changes.

 
 

Foto-Rechte: Cluster of Excellence Physics of Life (PoL)

Juli

M.Sc. Alissa Wilms (Berlin) - Kalenderwoche 30

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Alissa is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in quantum computing in the Jens Eisert group at the Freie Universität Berlin in tandem with Porsche Digital. She combines her curiosity and knowledge of quantum computing with the field of artificial intelligence and optimization, daring to genuinely unite quantum information theory with practical quantum computing towards effective applications.
 
 
 
 

Foto-Rechte: M.Sc. Alissa Wilms

Dr. Uta Bilow (Dresden) - Kalenderwoche 29

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Uta is a science communicator at the Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics at Technische Universität Dresden. After her Ph.D. in chemistry, she started to work as a freelance science journalist and communicator. During the startup of CERN´s Large Hadron Collider in 2008, she joined TU Dresden and began to work as coordinator for “International Masterclasses,” an outreach program in particle physics. The program runs in 60 countries worldwide and allows high school students to participate in hands-on activities with real data from particle physics experiments. Uta is also co-leader of the German „Netzwerk Teilchenwelt,“ a network between 29 universities and research labs in Germany, bringing particle and astroparticle physics to the classroom.
 
 
 
 
 

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Uta Bilow

Prof. Dr. Monika Aidelsburger (Munich) - Kalenderwoche 28

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Monika is a professor for synthetic quantum matter at the Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich since 2019.
Her research focuses on quantum simulation of many-body physics with ultracold atoms in optical lattices. During her Ph.D., she developed novel experimental techniques to realize topological lattice models with cold atoms. She then worked as a Marie-Curie postdoctoral fellow at Collège de France in Paris, where she studied homogeneous 2D Bose gases before she returned to LMU in 2017. Now she is working on topological Floquet systems and many-body localization and has received an ERC Starting Grant from the European Commission for simulating lattice gauge theories with ultracold Yb atoms.

Foto-Rechte: Kraemer/Krupp Stiftung

Dr. Luisa Lucie-Smith (Garching) - Kalenderwoche 27

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Luisa is a cosmologist, working as a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany. Her research focuses on developing interpretable machine learning frameworks to extract new physical insights into cosmological structure formation. By understanding and explaining how and why these complex algorithms reach particular decisions, one can use them to shed light on physics problems that may be too hard to tackle with standard statistical and analytical approaches. She is interested in understanding the relationship between the early-Universe and the final properties of cosmic structures such as large empty regions and bound dark matter structures, as well as their connection to galaxies.

Luisa has been awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Michael Penston 2020 runner-up prize for the best doctoral thesis in astronomy or astrophysics.

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Luisa Lucie-Smith

Juni

Dr. Nathalie Nagl (Garching) - Kalenderwoche 26

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Nathalie is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching and works in the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics led by Prof. Ferenc Krausz. Starting with her Ph.D. thesis, she has continuously pushed the frontiers of high-repetition-rate femtosecond laser sources. She aims to generate highly intense few-cycle pulses at exotic wavelengths in the mid-infrared spectral region. With her experimental findings, Nathalie has pioneered a new generation of highly compact and low-noise laser systems that will be used to analyze minuscule variations in the infrared response of body fluids and thereby identify — non-invasively — early signs of illnesses such as cancer (Lasers4Life project).

 

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Nathalie Nagl

Prof. Dr. Roser Valentí (Frankfurt) - Kalenderwoche 25

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Roser is a professor of theoretical physics at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Her field of research is computational solid-state with a focus on microscopic modeling of correlated materials such as unconventional superconductors, frustrated magnets, and systems with topologically non-trivial states via a combination of first-principles-based methods and many-body numerical techniques.
 
 
 

Foto-Rechte: Prof. Dr. Roser Valentí

M.Sc. Lara Ortmanns (Gothenburg, Sweden) - Kalenderwoche 24

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Lara is a Ph.D. student within a co-tutoring agreement between the RWTH Aachen and Chalmers University in Sweden, which will lead to a jointly awarded degree. At RWTH Aachen, she works at the Department of Theory for Statistical Physics and is part of the Research Training Group "Quantum Many-Body Methods in Condensed-Matter Systems"; at Chalmers University, she works at the Applied Quantum Physics Laboratory of the Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience. Her current work focuses on out-of-equilibrium dissipative quantum systems with strong Coulomb interaction. In particular, she is interested in their transient dynamics that are manifest in charge and heat transport. In the future, she will also consider aspects of quantum thermodynamics in this kind of quantum system.
 

Foto-Rechte: M.Sc. Lara Ortmanns

M.Sc. Anne Emering (Dortmund) - Kalenderwoche 23

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Anne recently finished her Master's degree at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). During her Master's thesis, she analyzed different effects of doping on the charge carrier dynamics in organic semiconductors. As of now, she started her Ph.D. in the research group of Prof. Götz Uhrig at TU Dortmund, where she aims to investigate topological excitations in magnetic systems theoretically.
 
 
 
 

Foto-Rechte: M.Sc. Anne Emering

Mai

Dr. Yulia Krupskaya (Dresden) - Kalenderwoche 22

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Yulia is a group leader at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden. Her group is working on organic and metal-organic materials investigating molecular single crystal growth, structural, charge transport, and magnetic properties. One of the main focuses of the group is organic semiconductor single crystals, which, thanks to their perfect structure, enable investigation and understanding of fundamental electronic properties such as charge transfer and transport - the most relevant effects for organic electronics applications.
 
 

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Yulia Krupskaya

M.Sc. Marie Schmitz (Dortmund) - Kalenderwoche 21

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Marie is a Ph.D. student at TU Dortmund University. She works at the department of experimental solid-state physics 1b. Her research addresses the metal-semiconductor interface of low-dimensional, silicon-based nanostructures. In order to understand their chemical and structural properties, photoelectron spectroscopy and photoelectron diffraction experiments are conducted. The experiments are performed with soft x-rays from beamline 11 of the Dortmund storage ring DELTA. In combination with theoretical simulations, she reveals detailed structure models at the atomic scale. Besides her work, she is actively involved in the association for physics students and alumni to expand the network between active and former physics students.

Foto-Rechte: M.Sc. Marie Schmitz

Dr. Ivy Frenger (Kiel) - Kalenderwoche 20

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Ivy is a research scientist at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and presently involved in the BMBF project Humboldt Tipping. Her research focus is on the role of ocean mesoscale eddies in the Earth system. Mesoscale eddies are circular currents in the ocean with typical lateral scales of around 100 kilometers and lifetimes of about a month, and they are ephemeral phenomena in the ocean. Ivy makes use of numerical ocean models to test the impact of mesoscale eddies for instance on how the ocean stores carbon, which is fundamental to understand in the context of anthropogenic climate change.

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Ivy Frenger

Dr. Isabella Graf (New Haven, CT, USA) - Kalenderwoche 19

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Isabella_Graf_Physikerin.jpeg
Isabella is a postdoctoral researcher in theoretical biophysics working with Ben Machta at Yale University. Her goal is to better understand how biological systems self-organize themselves to be close to critical points, where they can exhibit collective behaviors and high sensitivity to small external signals. She has a particular focus on multicomponent mixtures like cellular membranes. Experiments with cell-derived plasma membranes suggest that their composition resides near a miscibility critical point. However, there have been few hints as to how this regulation occurs and Isabella is working to understand whether lipid homeostasis motifs could naturally tune the membrane to these interesting regions of thermodynamic space.

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Isabella Graf

Dr. Beata M. Szydłowska (Neubiberg/Munich) - Kalenderwoche 18

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Beata_Szydłowska_Physikerin.jpeg
Beata is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Physics at the Bundeswehr University Munich in Neubiberg. Her work spins around 2D materials, e.g., graphene or transition metal dichalcogenides, especially WS2 and PtSe2. These materials are layered structures that are uniquely defined as they dramatically change their properties while thinned down to monolayer. Beata is interested in their fundamental size-dependent properties but also possible applications. Recently, she explores their pollutants sensing capabilities. It is an extremely important problem as about 4.2 million deaths are caused by pollutions annually. 

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Beata M. Szydłowska

April

Dr. Manita Chouksey (Hamburg) - Kalenderwoche 17

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Manita is a post-doctoral researcher in Theoretical Oceanography at the Institut für Meereskunde, Universität Hamburg. Her research explores the energy transfers and nonlinear interactions between internal gravity waves and mesoscale eddies in geophysical flows. Her research ranges from developing mathematical equations and numerical computational methods in order to disentangle the balanced eddy motions from the unbalanced wave motions to running numerical model simulations to understand energy transfers between these motions as well as nonlinear wave-wave interactions. These processes form an important component of the energy cycle of Earth's atmosphere and ocean.

Her recent venture is combining the theory and observations using numerical models of oceanic processes to understand the role of eddies and waves on the eastern boundary upwelling systems through process modeling within the project REEBUS.

Beyond a scientist, Manita is an artist, a poet, an amateur astronomer and has acted in theater plays, one of which has been showcased in an intercultural festival in Hamburg.

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Manita Chouksey

Prof. Dr. Christine Selhuber-Unkel (Heidelberg) - Kalenderwoche 16

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Christine_Selhuber-Unkel_Physikerin.png

 
She works with her group at the interface of biophysics and materials science, where they control cells by embedding them into 3D structures or applying forces to them. The goal of their research is to investigate novel concepts for tissue engineering and biohybrid robotics. 
 
 
 
 

Foto-Rechte: Prof. Dr. Christine Selhuber-Unkel

M.Sc. Anni Röse (Braunschweig) - Kalenderwoche 15

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Anni studied physics in Göttingen, Germany. She received her M.S. degree from the Georg-August University in 2018. Since 2019, she has been pursuing a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering at the Ilmenau University of Technology and is a part of working group 5.42 “Multiwavelength interferometry for geodetic lengths” at PTB.
One critical issue when surveying large structures like telescopes outdoors is the compensation of the refractivity-induced beam bending in leveling. For this, the temperature gradients in the plane along the line of sight need to be determined. She and her colleagues are currently developing a dispersive optical thermometer. It will be realized by an absolute interferometer with two different colors and a 2f/3f detection scheme for phase detection.

Foto-Rechte: M.Sc. Anni Röse

Dr. Jenny Wagner (Heidelberg) - Kalenderwoche 14

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Jenny is a cosmologist of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Heidelberg University. In her own DFG-funded research project, she explores dark matter distributions and properties that can be directly inferred from observed strong gravitational lensing effects. These rare phenomena occur when light rays of background light sources bend around massive objects on their path into our telescopes, such that observations of these deflections allow inferring properties of the light-bending mass. In December 2020, she was awarded the Prize for Courageous Science for her innovative approach to separate observation-based evidence from model assumptions. Currently, she transfers this methodology to derive the morphologies of dark matter agglomerations from fundamental principles to replace heuristic fitting functions like the Navarro-Frenk-White mass density profile, which is often used to describe deflecting masses in strong gravitational lensing. Beyond her research, she engages in outreach talks for "Urknall, Weltall und das Leben" to disseminate recent insights into our universe to the public.

Foto-Rechte: Björn Pucks

März

B.Sc. Maren Stocklöw (Karlsruhe) - Kalenderwoche 13

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Maren_Stockloew_Physikerin.jpg
Maren Stocklöw is a master's student at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Currently, she is working on her master's thesis in the group of Prof. Markus Garst at the Institute of Theoretical Solid State Physics. She is investigating the effective low-energy behavior of Skyrmion strings in chiral magnets. Skyrmions are two-dimensional topological magnetic structures that appear in chiral magnets subjected to an external magnetic field. They can extend along the field direction, forming a magnetic string that supports the propagation of spin-wave excitations. Alongside her studies, Maren is chairwoman of the physics department’s theater group. Since its formation in 2002, the group has staged more than 25 plays in the physics lecture hall.

Foto-Rechte: B.Sc. Maren Stocklöw

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Doris Reiter (Münster) - Kalenderwoche 12

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Doris is a Junior-Professor at the University of Münster leading the research group Ultrafast Optics in Nanostructured Solids. Her research field is solid-state theory with a focus on light-matter interaction on ultra-short time and length scales. Furthermore, she is highly interested in solid-state applications for quantum information technology. Since 2017, Doris is co-speaker of the Semiconductor Division of the DPG and host of ‘Semiconductors for breakfast’ – a new online lecture format of the DPG. Moreover, Doris is chairperson and co-founder of the DPG working groups AGyouLeaP, aiming at increasing the standing and visibility of young research group leaders in physics who start their own research agenda.

Foto-Rechte: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Doris Reiter

Dr. Heike Wex (Leipzig) - Kalenderwoche 11

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Heike is a senior scientist at the Leibniz-Institute for Tropospheric Research in Leipzig. She is a renowned expert in topics concerning cloud condensation nuclei and heterogeneous ice nucleation and currently focuses on atmospheric ice-nucleating particles. She is a member of the International Commission on Clouds and Precipitation, for which she also organized the 16th ICCP-conference in Leipzig in 2012. Through classes in geology and meteorology, which she took during her physics studies, she started to know about climate change, and particularly through working with data from the Arctic, she is very aware of the connected dangers for humanity. This is why, in her spare time, she is engaged with “Scientists for Future” since their beginning in March 2019, trying to inform people about climate change in general and also trying to change things for the better on a local scale, in cooperation with many other locals who also organize themselves in several climate groups.

The picture shows her on the top level of LACIS (Leipzig Aerosol Cloud Interaction Simulator) at the cloud-tower of the Leibniz-Institute for Tropospheric Research in Leipzig, at the generation unit for aerosol particles. LACIS is used to examine the hygroscopic growth of aerosol particles and their ability to nucleate cloud droplets and heterogeneous droplet freezing.

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Heike Wex

Dr. Benedetta Casu (Tübingen) - Kalenderwoche 10

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Benedetta_Casu_Physikerin.jpg
Benedetta is head of the Organic Spins group at the Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Tübingen. She works in the field of organic quantum materials.

She pioneered the research on radical thin films introducing the use of soft X-rays-based techniques, such as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and photoemission electron microscopy with the additional use of synchrotron radiation that is of paramount importance to elucidate interface phenomena otherwise not accessible with other sources. The thin-film phase of organic radicals and their interfaces were unknown before she started working in the field. This is a fundamental pre-requisite to test their suitability for electronics.

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Benedetta Casu

Dr. Anne Nielsen (Dresden) - Kalenderwoche 9

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Anne leads the Quantum Many-Body Systems group at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems. Her group uses numerical simulations and analytical tools to study the properties of strongly-correlated quantum systems in one, two, and fractal dimensions. She is particularly interested in anyonic quasiparticles that appear in topological quantum systems. She also studies exceptions to thermal behavior and how measurements affect the dynamics of quantum systems. The aim is to find new types of behaviors and to understand how and when particular properties arise.

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Anne Nielsen

Februar

Prof. Dr. Julia Dshemuchadse (Ithaca, NY, USA) - Kalenderwoche 8

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Julia is an assistant professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY in the USA. With her research group, she studies complex crystal structures as well as crystallization phenomena through self-assembly simulations, using molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo methods. Their goal is to design new materials and to develop a fundamental understanding of the processes of structure formation and stabilization in soft and hard condensed matter.

 

Foto-Rechte: Prof. Dr. Julia Dshemuchadse

Dr. Angela Wittmann (Cambridge, MA, USA) - Kalenderwoche 7

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Angela_Wittmann_Physikerin.jpg
Angela is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) in the group of Prof. Geoffrey Beach. Her research explores the control of the spin degree of freedom and spin dynamics in unconventional condensed matter materials such as organic semiconductors and antiferromagnets. Using different experimental techniques, including magneto-transport measurements and x-ray imaging, she aims to tackle the challenges posed by today’s vast amount of data by developing novel ultrafast and robust spin-based memory technologies.

 

 

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Angela Wittmann

M.Sc. Martha Lippich (Garching/Munich) - Kalenderwoche 6

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Martha_Lippich_Physikerin.JPG
Martha is currently finishing her Ph.D. in the field of cosmology with a focus on the statistical analysis of the large-scale structure in the Universe. For her latest Ph.D. project, she developed a code to estimate Minkowski functionals from the large-scale galaxy distribution under the supervision of Dr. Ariel G. Sánchez. Minkowski functionals characterize the geometry and the topology of the cosmic density field and contain important cosmological information. She currently works in the OPINAS group of Prof. Ralf Bender at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching. After her Ph.D., she intends to continue her work in the same group as a postdoctoral researcher. Her goal is to advance the analysis of Minkowski functionals further to extract information complementary to other more standard statistical analyses.

Foto-Rechte: M.Sc. Martha Lippich

M.Sc. Anna Sinterhauf (Göttingen) - Kalenderwoche 5

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Anna_Sinterhauf_Physikerin.jpg
Anna is a Ph.D. student at the IV. Physical Institute at the University of Göttingen. She is working in the group of Martin Wenderoth, which focuses on the development and application of scanning probe methods with the aim of answering challenging questions in the field of fundamental research on solid-state physics and nanostructures. In her experiments, Anna studies charge transport in graphene on the nanometer scale. The focus of her research is on understanding the impact of atomic-scale inhomogeneities on transport properties in this fascinating 2D material. To target this question, Anna uses the method of scanning tunneling potentiometry, which allows her to measure the voltage drop across a sample with the lateral resolution of a scanning tunneling microscope. The measurements take place under ultra-high vacuum conditions and are carried out both at room temperature and at low temperature using liquid nitrogen / liquid helium cooling. The picture shows Anna next to one of the home-built scanning tunneling microscopes.

Foto-Rechte: M.Sc. Anna Sinterhauf

Januar

Dr. Eileen Otte (Muenster) - Kalenderwoche 4

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Eileen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Applied Physics, University of Muenster. Her research focuses on structured singular light fields, representing light of spatially varying properties as amplitude, phase, and/or polarization and embedding optical singularities. Eileen develops novel approaches for the customization, analysis, and application of these complex light fields, giving new insights into the fundamental nature of light and paving the way to, for instance, advanced quantum communication or optical micro- and nano-manipulation. For her excellent Ph.D. thesis, she received the University of Muenster dissertation award and the research award 2020 of the Industrial Club Duesseldorf. Since the beginning of this year, Eileen is a junior class member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts.

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Eileen Otte

Dr. Anja Waske (Berlin) - Kalenderwoche 3

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Anja_Waske_Physikerin.jpg

Anja is head of the division "Radiological Methods" at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin. Her research field is at the interface of materials science and X-ray imaging. Her team develops 3D X-ray imaging methods and analysis routes for 3D image data in order to understand the properties of functional, structural, and additively manufactured materials.

Anja has been awarded the Georg-Sachs Prize of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Materialkunde e.V. (DGM) in 2020. 

Foto-Rechte: BAM

Prof. Dr. Franziska Lautenschläger (Saarbrücken) - Kalenderwoche 2

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Franziska leads an interdisciplinary workgroup in cellular biophysics at the University of Saarland, Germany. Her group works on the cytoskeleton in living cells: They are imaging actin, microtubules, and intermediate filaments and manipulate them with laser light to understand their polymerization dynamics, interplay, and impact on mechanical properties of the cell. They are also interested in the effect the cytoskeleton has on cellular functions, particularly cellular migration capacity, search efficiency, or cells' ability to polarize. Understanding these basic concepts in biophysics helps them understand how cells function in healthy organisms and potentially treat them in diseases.

Foto-Rechte: Iris Maurer - Silbersalz

Dr. Katrin Fuersich (Stuttgart) - Kalenderwoche 1

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Katrin is currently working at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany. She graduated in November 2020 with a Ph.D. work on the spectroscopic investigation of so-called quantum materials and keeps investigating these fascinating class of materials as a postdoctoral scholar. Using x-ray-based scattering methods, Katrin explores the unprecedented properties of Ni- and Ru-based quantum materials for potential applications, such as next-generation electronics or novel devices for energy storage and conversion.

Foto-Rechte: Dr. Katrin Fuersich

 

Hier geht es zu den Teilnehmerinnen der Physikerin der Woche 20182019 und 2020 Projekte.