IRTG at Adlershof Science and Technology Park

The highlight of the event was the visit and guided tour of the synchrotron at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) – BESSYII. If one had to summarize the BESSYII tour in a single word, it would simply be: “WOW!” An enormous amount of modern technology concentrated in one place – supported by outstanding engineers and scientists working there.

BESSYII contributes to research in many important areas, including:

- developing more efficient solar cells,
- improving plastic recycling,
- producing green hydrogen,
- preparing better for future pandemics,
- extending battery lifetimes,
- fighting germs in hospitals,
- developing new efficient materials for IT,
- and even investigating historical artifacts such as the Nebra Sky Disc.

Many thanks to our doctoral researcher and PhD speaker Leo Cordsmeier for organizing the event. Special thanks also to Annette and Terry from HZB for the excellent tour.

Additionally, we had the pleasure of visiting the group of Prof. Janina Kneipp at the Institute of Chemistry of Humboldt University (HU) of Berlin. As head of the Optical Nanospectroscopy Group, Prof. Kneipp highlighted several main research directions of her group, including surface enhanced hyper Raman scattering for bioapplications. We were very impressed by the laboratories we visited, as well as by Prof. Kneipp’s personal involvement in building the group’s unique optical setups.

Last but not least, Guilherme Carraro Carella, a PhD student in the group of Prof. Kurt Busch, gave us a presentation at the Institute of Physics of HU.

We are very glad and grateful for the strong participation in this “Adlershof trip” from our doctoral researchers – both from Potsdam and from Berlin. Among the latter were, apart from the already mentioned Guilherme and Leo, also Anant (PhD student in Prof. Kneipp’s group) and Anna (PhD student in the group of Prof. Stephan Hecht).

We are already looking forward to the upcoming activities and events within the framework of our IRTG meetings!