Bruno Ghirotto obtained his doctoral degree on July 23, 2026 when he successfully defended his doctoral thesis about “The role of alpha-synuclein in enteric neurodegeneration: Intersecting inflammatory signaling with metabolic dysfunction”. Well done!

More than 600 young researchers and about 70 Nobel laureates from around the world gathered at the 75th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in early July of this year. Under the theme “75 Years and Beyond – Science Transcending Borders,” this year’s event focused on interdisciplinary scientific…

The 2026 Helmholtz Prize for outstanding achievements in the field of precision measurement has been awarded to, among others, Dr. Hanieh Fattahi and her research group “Femtosecond Fieldoscopy” at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL). The award recognizes their contribution to…

Every human cell is surrounded by a sugar coating known as the glycocalyx. It not only interacts with its environment but also reveals a great deal about cells’ internal states. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) have mapped sugar structures on cell surfaces using…

Last week, the joint retreat of our two graduate programmes IMPRS Physics of Light and IMPRS Physics and Medicine took place at the Hotel Rappen in Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

We kicked off the retreat with lightning talks, giving our PhD and master’s students the chance to present their research…

On April 30, we hosted the second edition of our “FAU meets IMPRS” event at the Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin (MPZPM).

We welcomed motivated Bachelor and Master students from FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg studying Physics, Molecular Medicine, ILS, Medical Engineering and Medicine, eager to…

Florian Schorn obtained his doctoral degree on April 30, 2026 when he successfully defended his doctoral thesis about “Development of in-fiber measurement methods for the analysis of chemical components and reactions”. Well done!

On April 28, we welcomed enthusiastic Bachelor and Master students from FAU’s Physics and Engineering programmes to our 4th “FAU meets IMPRS” event at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL).

The evening kicked off with an introduction talk by Prof. Florian Marquardt, Chair of the…

Research group leader Daniel Wehner was featured on FrankenFernsehen, sharing insights into his research about spinal cord regeneration in zebrafish (in German only). See the full report on FrankenFernsehen.

Changjin Son obtained his doctoral degree on February 24, 2026 when he successfully defended his doctoral thesis about “Towards photon pair generation via spontaneous four-wave mixing in nonlinear metasurfaces”. Well done!

Dr. Flore Kunst is being awarded the Bernhard Heß Prize 2026 for her work in the field of “topological physics – in particular non-Hermitian and topological phenomena in open systems.” Kunst heads a Lise Meitner research group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen.

Jonas Landgraf obtained his doctoral degree on February 4, 2026 when he successfully defended his doctoral thesis about “Automated discovery of better quantum machines”. Well done!

The newly established Jochen Guck Award was presented for the first time. It honors research, which applies Brillouin Microscopy in Biology. The first recipients are Konstantin Hein and Humberto Romero Limon, both PhD students at the Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin (MPZPM).

Ruchi Goswami obtained her doctoral degree on February 24, 2026 when she successfully defended her doctoral thesis about the accurate fabrication of polyacrylamide hydrogels using droplet microfluidics to produce microgels that mimic cellular physical properties for mechanobiology research. Well…

Dr. Viola Introini has been awarded the Early Career Scientist Prize in Biological Physics by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). She receives the prize for her novel physical approach to malaria research. Her lab at the Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin (MPZPM)…

At the event “Our Physics – Our Research” (German: Unsere Physik – Unsere Forschung, UPhUF), the working groups of the Department of Physics at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) provided information about their current research. The venue was the Max Planck Institute for the…

Conrad Möckel obtained his doctoral degree on February 24, 2026 when he successfully defended his doctoral thesis about “Phenomenological Perspectives in Biophysics”. Well done!