Our Vice Speaker Prof. Ilko Bald, PI Prof. Amitabh Banerji, and IRTG & Outreach Coordinator Dr. Natalia Velk presented our exhibition boards on the theme of our CRC. Behind these three boards lies an enormous amount of teamwork and creativity – the perfect opportunity to thank everyone who helped make this project a reality.
Our heartfelt thanks go to proWissen Potsdam e.V., especially Dr. Simone Leinkauf, project coordinator, and Elena Lopteva for the beautiful layout and incredible patience, as well as Annette Weiß and Jan Prüver for the accompanying podcast interview with our Vice Speaker Prof. Ilko Bald.
A very special thank-you goes to photographer Gerhard Westrich for our incredible group photo, taken from above with a drone. He also helped us draw the two huge circles you can see in the picture – each around three meters in diameter! We ended up with quite a bit of sunburn.☀️ And a very special thank-you to the whole CRC team who took part in this photo during our general retreat in May – and somehow survived staring up into the sunny sky, hopefully without any lasting damage to their eyesight! 😎
Many thanks also to the University of Potsdam: Kevin Ryl, who took many of the photographs; Matthias Zimmermann for providing the Physics Institute photo; Till Schwerdtfeger for his support with our time-and-space scheme; and Daniela Höpfner for helping with contacts and appointments.
Thank you to Namitha Deepak & Sibylle Rüstig for the colorful nanoparticle solutions and inspiration for the corresponding photograph, and to Sufian Rasheed, Sarah von Chamier Gliszczinski, Dr. Shreya Sinha, Nicolas Jahn, Dr. Evgenii Titov, Anahita Heraji Esfahani & Niklas Bier for bringing our experimental and theoretical research to life in the photos.
Thanks also to Christine Hildebrand & Maja Krone for valuable feedback, Constantin Egerer for photo editing, Jon Scouten and James Benson for their help with the English translation, and Dr. Sergio Kogikoski, Dr. Shashank Gahlhaut & Dr. Anisha Pathak for joining us at the opening ceremony!
And finally, our very special thanks go to the core content team behind the exhibition. Their work started back in March with one major challenge: How do we explain the essence of our CRC’s research in a way that is accessible to the general public – using only the roughly 2,000 characters allowed? For comparison: our CRC proposal contains around one million characters...
After five months of discussions, ideas, writing, rewriting, and creative teamwork, the result is three exhibition boards capturing the very essence of our CRC’s research. They were developed mainly by:
🔹 Prof. Matias Bargheer – without his initiative, CRC 1636 would not have been part of this exhibition in the first place. The entire ultrafast perspective of our Bauzaun – including the stunning laser photograph – grew out of his ideas.
🔹 Prof. Ilko Bald – he shaped the entire chemistry perspective of our Bauzaun. He helped organize the photograph of the nanoparticle solutions and choose the final title, and patiently responded to what must have felt like an endless stream of emails despite his already demanding schedule.
🔹 Prof. Amitabh Banerji – for providing the organizational framework for launching the project, arranging meetings, and generously sharing his extensive experience in science communication.
🔹 Dr. Felix Stete – his ideas influenced almost everything you can see on the Bauzaun, from the texts to the vast majority of the photographs. Above all, he strongly advocated for one central message: human creativity is still more impressive than AI.
🔹 Tobias Eckardt – for supporting his colleagues throughout the process and helping us find the perfect location for our artificial-photosynthesis photo.
🔹 Prof. Carsten Henkel – for careful proofreading and valuable advice.
🔹 Dr. Natalia Velk – she probably tested everyone’s patience with countless emails, but poured her heart and soul into this project until almost the very last moment – sometimes even with a few tears. Standing in front of the finished Bauzaun, however, those are tears of happiness. Behind every line of text and every photograph, she sees the many discussions, ideas, revisions, and creative moments that brought this exhibition to life. She could probably write an entire book about the story behind it.❤️
And now our science is right in the heart of Potsdam – and passers-by are already stopping to look and read! There is another lovely thought: once the exhibition in Potsdam is over, our Bauzaun is planned to move to the university campus. So perhaps a little piece of CRC 1636 will remain there “for eternity.”
P.S. A lovely coincidence: our sibling biology CRC, CRC 1644, is also part of the “Wissenschaft im Zentrum” exhibition – and their title also features the word “superpower.” Apparently, great minds think alike! 😊