Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light

IMPRS Physics and Medicine 🤝 Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin 📽️ 👀: “The aim of this graduate school is to educate and train a new generation of scientists who use methods from physics to do fundamental research in medicine.” The International Max Planck Research School - Physics and Medicine (IMPRS-PM) is a highly innovative new graduate program at the Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin (MPZPM), an interdisciplinary joint research center of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL), the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and the Universitätsklinikum Erlangen (UKER). In collaboration with FAU and UKER, IMPRS-PM offers MSc stipends and PhD positions, excellent career development opportunities and a structured interdisciplinary curriculum. Find more information about the IMPRS-PM, the application process and contacts here! 👉 https://lnkd.in/dACaBZ38 #MPZPM #Research #Physics #Medicine

Girls'Day - Mädchen-Zukunftstag 2025 – Wir sind dabei! Wie sieht der Arbeitsalltag einer Forscherin aus? Wie wird man Wissenschaftlerin? Was bedeutet eigentlich Grundlagenforschung? Welche Rolle spielen Mechanikerinnen, Laboringenieurinnen und IT-lerinnen in der Forschung? Und was hat Physik mit Medizin zu tun? Am 3. April 2025 können Mädchen ab der 5. Klasse die Antworten auf diese und viele weitere spannende Fragen entdecken – direkt bei uns am MPL und MPZPM! Experimentieren, tüfteln, forschen: Der Girls’ Day bietet Schülerinnen die Möglichkeit, die Welt der Physik hautnah zu erleben. Ob im Labor, in der IT oder in unseren Service-Einheiten – wir zeigen, wie vielfältig Karrierewege in der Wissenschaft sein können. Unser Ziel? Mehr Mädchen für Physik begeistern und ihnen zeigen, dass Wissenschaft nicht nur spannend, sondern auch voller Zukunftschancen ist! -------------- What does a researcher’s daily life look like? How do you become a scientist? What is fundamental research? What roles do mechanics, lab engineers, and IT specialists play in research? And how is physics connected to medicine? On April 3, 2025, girls from 5th grade onwards can explore these and many more exciting questions—right here at MPL and MPZPM! Experimenting, tinkering, and researching—the Girls' Day gives students the opportunity to experience physics up close. Whether in the lab, IT, or our service units, we show how diverse career paths in science can be. Our goal? To inspire more girls to pursue physics and show them that science is not only exciting but full of future opportunities!

The rising energy demands of our society call for innovative solutions. Prof. Gerd Leuchs, Founding Director of MPL, is part of the Bavarian expert commission on nuclear fusion. The team has now presented their report “Mission Fusion Energy”. Read more about the commission’s recommendations and the role of fusion energy in our future energy supply here: https://lnkd.in/dDJWe7tK

Today is the International Mother Language Day! Research knows no boundaries and science, after all, benefits immensely from cross-border exchange. As an international institute for fundamental research, we host about 300 employees and scientists from 56 countries around the world. We communicate with each other primarily in English and German. Each of us has their own native language, which enriches our institute with fantastic diversity. These include for example Arabic, Bengali, Croatian, Danish, Filipino, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Nepali, Portuguese, Romanian, Swahili, Turkish, Ukrainian and many more. What languages do you speak?

Good luck with this project of our research group leader Hanieh Fattahi!

📢 Announcement: IMPRS OOF (out-of-your-field) lectures on February 25th. Prof. Frederik Graw will talk about "The diversity of the immune system" and Prof. Ben Fabry will give a lecture about "Cell and tissue mechanics". The lectures will take place at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in the Leuchs-Russell-Auditorium and is broadcasted to the seminar room at MPZPM (Kussmaulallee 2, Erlangen). Feel free to join!

The Distinguished Lecturer Series (#DLS) is the main venue of the MPL to bring to you the international thought leaders in the science of light. In our second event in 2025, Sara Mouradian, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Washington gave her lecture on "Engineering (Useful) Trapped-Ion Quantum Technologies". You’ll find her inspiring talk here: https://lnkd.in/dkymaSej #science #physics #light #quantum #quantumtechnology #quantumcomputing

To celebrate #InternationalDayOfWomenAndGirlsInScience, we would like to share this picture from Flore Kunst's research group! Of our scientific staff, 32% are women, and their exceptional accomplishments are greatly contributing to the advancement of basic research at our institute and beyond! In 2024, Hanieh Fattahi and Birgit Stiller were two female scientists who received the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grants, to name just a few of the numerous outstanding awards received by female MPL researchers in the last year. At total of six research groups at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light are led by women: Quantum Radiation (Maria Chekhova), Femtosecond Fieldoscopy (Hanieh Fattahi), Non-Hermitian Topological Phenomena (Flore Kunst), Quantum Optoacoustics (Birgit Stiller), Topology and Neuromorphic Computing (Clara Wanjura) and Biophysics & Optogenetics (Katja Zieske). The Technology Development and Service Unit (TDSU) for Nanofabrication (Irina Harder) as well as the Administration & Infrastructure department (Dorothe Burggraf) are also led by a female executive. But especially in science, women are still underrepresented. Our aim is to continue to increase the above figures in order to create a #genderequal working environment! About the picture: How can interactions with an environment change the behaviour of sys­tems in interesting ways? How different are things from doughnuts? Those are the questions at the interface of the fields of ›non-hermitian physics‹ and ›topology‹, which researchers at the MPL are attempting to decode by exploring their phenomena. The image illustrates this inter­play: the energies of a two-dimensional lattice are shown as toroidal sur­faces above the Brillouin zone. These surfaces may be glued together at so-called branch cuts because of the non-Hermiticity of the underlying model. On the torus, the branch cuts can form non-contractible loops. Structures like these are highly robust against perturbations. #WomenInScience #11February #InspireInclusion

Save the date for our next remarkable event in our Distinguished Lecturer Series! 📅 ✍️ Sara Mouradian, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Washington, will give her fascinating talk "Engineering (Useful) Trapped-Ion Quantum Technologies" on February 11 at 2 pm CET. The lecture will take place in the Leuchs-Russell Auditorium. It will also be streamed via Zoom as well as recorded and added to our YouTube channel for anyone who misses the talk. ▶️ Engineering (Useful) Trapped-Ion Quantum Technologies 🕒 Tuesday, February 11 at 2 pm CET 📍 Leuchs-Russell Auditorium at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Erlangen 👉 Zoom access: https://lnkd.in/dmKnUhQu Meeting-ID: 681 4107 0014 Kenncode: 415890

The Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin hosted its first research highlight with the Exploring Brain Mechanics - Collaborative Research Center Update Meeting 2025. Scientists from various disciplines discussed the latest research in the field of brain mechanics and engaged in a lively scientific exchange to foster a deeper understanding. With the interdisciplinary expertise of engineers, physicists, biologists, medical researchers and medical specialists in Erlangen and Berlin, scientists from the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1540 ‘Exploring Brain Mechanics’ (EBM) are focusing their research projects on the importance of mechanical properties of tissues to regulating central nervous system (CNS) cell functions.  ‘Our Collaborative Research Centre is exceptional: it brings together many scientists from a wide variety of fields who enthusiastically bundle their knowledge and methods to jointly answer important open questions in the neurosciences. The unique aspect is our focus on brain mechanics, a very promising approach that has been neglected for far too long,’ says Prof Kristian Franze, Taskforce EBM, Director of the Institute of Medical Physics and Microtissue Engineering and Board Member of the MPZPM. Learn more 👉 https://lnkd.in/dUxsAFFW FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin #research #physics #biology #medicine #collaboration #cns