Awards

For over a decade, Dr Silke Stähler-Schöpf has led the MPQ Student Lab PhotonLab with impressive success: this year alone, around 3, 000 students visited the PhotonLab to explore experiments on lasers, light, and quantum physics. For her extensive contributions to physics education and outreach, Silke Stähler-Schöpf receives the 2025 Georg-Kerschensteiner Prize, awarded annually by the German Physical Society.
  more

Usually rather rare, but for MPQ since last autumn the status quo: two Nobel Prizes in less than twenty years – in the comparatively short institute history of only 45 years. Not many research institutions this size around the globe can say the same. That’s why two of these special emblems from now on will shine proudly on the driveway to the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics – signs of scientific success that speak for themselves. more

The LMU Center for NanoScience and four LMU spin-off companies present the Nano Innovation Award for particularly innovative doctoral theses. Andreas Gritsch, who completed his doctorate in the Otto Hahn Group Quantum Networks at MPQ, won second place. The physicist built a novel platform for quantum networks that has significant potential for the development of scalable quantum network nodes. more

The prestigious research award enables internationally recognised researchers from abroad to undertake guest stays at German scientific institutions. Adam Kaufman began his visit on 14 July and will collaborate with W2 research group leader Monika Aidelsburger and MPQ Director Immanuel Bloch. more

The physicist from the Department of Laser Spectroscopy at MPQ has measured electronic transitions in deuterium with unprecedented precision. The prize, named after the Nobel Prize winner and pioneer of laser spectroscopy, honours particularly outstanding and ground-breaking dissertations in the field of physics. In his work, Vitaly Wirthl succeeded in measuring a specific energy transition in deuterium, the heavy hydrogen, more precisely than ever before. more