Dear DESY colleagues,

Tomorrow is DESY DAY, our day to honour the people behind behind the research that makes this centre so unique. It's the day on which we present science that brings the future into the auditorium, and on which we all come together for the award ceremony, the get-together, the Jentschke Lecture. We look forward to seeing young talents and great experts - a Nobel Prize winner and you too, of course! This newsletter is the warm-up to the event.

See you tomorrow!

These are the newbies 2024

Congratulations to our newly appointed scientists! New appointment in this case means that they have become new lead scientists at DESY or that they have a new joint professorship with a university. The newly appointed 2024 are (in the photo above from left to right) Saša Bajt, Sara Buson, Markus Ilchen, Sarah Heim, Helen Ginn and Philipp Neumann. Find out more about them in a special short film by filmmaker Delf Deicke. "We all like to talk about what we do. But it's really difficult to do it in a pithy way," Saša Bajt reported after the shoot. "I'm curious to see what comes out of it." And so are we. You can watch the film on DESY DAY.

To put it in a nutshell …

Highly topical, very cool, ultra short: the highlights from the four research areas really deserve their name. Four scientists give insights into their work in 150 seconds each on DESY DAY. And that's what it's all about in 2024:

Postdoc researcher Sarah Mechbal (AP, left) speaks five languages. Tomorrow she will be talking about the new sensors for the IceCube upgrade in Antarctica. In her mind, she is already out in the ice: "In a few weeks, I'll be travelling to the South Pole to work on upgrading the detectors. Bye bye northern hemisphere!" +++ Fellow Fabian Becherer (FH, top centre) speaks about precision measurements with the new pixel detector PXD at the Belle II experiment in Japan. However, he could certainly also talk for hours about how he got the detector through customs and security checks at the airport when he flew to Japan with the instrument in his hand luggage. +++ The title of Dominik Oberthür's (FS, right) is "A snapshot love story". The senior scientist at CFEL usually gives 90-minute university lectures. "The topic (note: it's about serial crystallography) has so many cool facets that it's really hard to say all the essentials in such a short time." +++ And physicist Marie Kristin Czwalinna (M, bottom centre) takes up the challenge for the accelerator sector. "The most exciting thing about my work is that we are constantly pushing the boundaries of what is technically feasible." 150 seconds might seem like a long time to her. In her lecture, she will focus on the attosecond range.

DESY AWARD FOR EXCEPTIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS
and the nominees are …

Exceptional achievements at DESY come at a prize: the DESY Award for Exceptional Achievements. Robert Feidenhans'l, Chairman of the 2024 Award Committee, will announce the winners live on stage at DESY DAY. And this year's nominees are:

Benjamin Behm and Dirk Kornmüller for their outstanding, passionate and personal commitment to the education of DESY's technical trainees.
Michael Bousonville, Sebastian Göller, Victor Kröger, Timo Weinhausen. They have achieved considerable energy savings in the European XFEL without compromising its performance.
Ann-Christin Dippel, Olof Gutowski, Martin von Zimmermann for their scientific and technical achievements - as well as for their social and integrative commitment to the P07 beamline of PETRA III.
Katharina Henjes-Kunst for her extraordinary achievements particularly in promoting the scientific landscape in Germany and strengthening DESY's reputation in eastern Germany.
David Melkumyan and the Resource Manager and Central Control Team (RM&CC) for the Array Control and Data Acquisition Software Project (ACADA) at the Cherenkov Telescope Observatory.
Christian Reckleben for his contributions to the introduction of microelectronics at DESY. He is also the engineer behind the success of the InnoPool project ‘Tangerine’.
Christian Schwanenberger for his exceptional and innovative outreach activities, in particular through the successful combination of art and science.
Adelheid Sommer for her outstanding commitment to promoting young talent, especially for networking with partners from politics, schools in the region and extracurricular learning centres.
Benno Zeitler for the successful reduction of energy consumption in Linac II operation by approximately 20 per cent; a great contribution to sustainability and cost savings at DESY.

Congratulations to all nominees!

INTERNATIONAL FELLOWSHIP AWARD – WILFRIED WURTH AWARD
for Giulia Illuminati and Mats Simmermacher

Brilliant temporary reinforcement from outside: DESY is presenting this award for the second time to two internationally renowned scientists or outstanding young researchers. The nominations came from DESY scientists

Zeuthen is looking forward to Giulia Illuminati, a young researcher at INFN Bologna who specialises in high-energy neutrino astrophysics. Giulia was nominated by Sara Buson. Mats Simmermacher has been invited to the Hamburg campus. He is currently a theorist of chemical physics at the University of Oxford. His field is Ultrafast Imaging and Theory. Mats was nominated by Christina Bömer.

PhD Award of the Association of DESY Friends and Sponsors
for Sören Jalas and Florian Lorkowski

In the search for state-of-the-art knowledge and new ideas, it is worth taking a look at outstanding PhD theses – like the ones written by Sören Jalas (top left) and Florian Lorkowski (top right). The two young scientists will receive this year's PhD Awards of the Association of DESY Friends and Sponsors.

Sören Jalas comes from Plön in Holstein, studied physics in Hamburg and has been closely associated with DESY since his bachelor's degree; since this year he has been a postdoc in the MLS group. Florian Lorkowski grew up in Thuringia and studied at Chemnitz University of Technology. He is currently working at the University of Zurich in the field of particle physics phenomenology. So of course we wanted to know more about both of them.

DESY INNOVATION AWARD
for the project 'Gas-phase sono-photonic light control'

Christoph Heyl and his team receive this year's Innovation Award for a truly award-winning project: "It's about the contactless control of light in air or other gases through the use of intense ultrasound waves," explains Heyl, who heads the Photonics Research and Innovation Group at DESY. And the potential applications? "Very promising. In the field of laser plasma acceleration, for example. Or in the semiconductor industry, in health technologies and for industrial manufacturing processes." More on this tomorrow in the auditorium.

BJØRN H. WIIK PRIZE
for Ludovica Aperio Bella

Limitless and marvellous

Once you see her live, you have no doubt that she can use her scientific and human qualities to push boundaries of all kinds: perceived, measured, imagined - and that somewhere out there in the universe, some particle is just waiting to be discovered by her. Ludovica Aperio Bella is a particle physicist in DESY's ATLAS group and this year's winner of the Bjørn H. Wiik Prize, DESY's most prestigious scientific award.

Her enthusiasm for precision measurements ("addictive") and for the Z boson ("my absolute favourite particle") is infectious. Her passion for research ("I have this urge to push the boundaries of scientific knowledge") and for the next generation ("mentoring is incredibly enriching") is simply inspiring. Luckily, Ludovica Aperio Bella had time for an interview shortly before DESY DAY. The 2024 Wiik Award winner on the infinite universe and courageous decisions, on small children and big ideas.

PS: On DESY DAY, Ludovica Aperio Bella will of course speak live in the auditorium about her fascinating research.

GOLDEN BAGDE OF HONOUR
for Ulrich Gensch

DESY's Golden Badge of Honour has only been awarded ten times so far. "To qualify for the award, you have to have rendered outstanding services to DESY and its science," says Frank Lehner, Head of the Directorate Office. "The award winners are the very best DESY heroes who have helped shape the history of the research centre." This circle now also includes Ulrich Gensch, whose career is closely linked to the Zeuthen site. Most recently, the physicist was Lead Scientist and representative of the DESY Directorate in Zeuthen from 1998 to 2012.

Right in the middle instead of ‘after the show’: when winners, nominees, DESY people from all areas and guests come together, we need some time to talk and network before the Jentschke Lecture. The DESY DAY get-together starts at around 15:30 h in the auditorium foyer.

“SUB-ATOMIC MOTIONS – From capturing electrons to probing human health”

For more than 20 years, the Jentschke Lecture has been a tribute to DESY founder Willibald Jentschke. This year's lecture will be held by Nobel Laureate in Physics Ferenc Krausz, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics.

After winning the Nobel Prize in 2023, Ferenc Krausz was described as the ‘master of laser flashes’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung), the ‘paparazzo of electrons’ (Tagesschau). "He deals with attosecond physics, with processes that take place unimaginably fast and are invisible to the naked eye," says DESY Director Helmut Dosch, who is a personal friend of Krausz. ‘An attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second - but Ferenc Krausz is giving us all an hour on DESY DAY.’

Ferenc Krausz's topic tomorrow is: ‘SUB-ATOMIC MOTIONS - From capturing electrons to probing human health’. Live, in English and followed by Q&As from approx. 16:30 in the DESY auditorium.

If you can't make it to the auditorium in person: we have set up a live stream for you.

In case you're wondering what happened to the Lifetime Achievement Awards: they will be given a new setting in 2024. "We will honour DESY employees for their life's work and personal commitment during the staff meeting on 16 December," says Ismar Kiseljakovic, Helmut Dosch's executive assistant. "And of course they will all be presented with the treasured flanges."

These are our "lifetimers" 2024: Reinhard Bacher (M), Nina Golubeva (M), Thorsten Kracht (FS), Albrecht Leuschner (M) Kirsten Malitz (FS), Carsten Niebuhr (FH), Uwe Sassenberg (V), Uwe Schneekloth (FH), Horst Schulte-Schrepping (FS), Karl-Heinz Sulanke (AP). Many thanks and all the best to everyone at this point!

DESY DAY featuring DESY Connect:
Members of our alumni network DESY Connect will also be in the auditorium audience tomorrow. Welcome!

DESY inform (special edition):


Idea, realisation, texts:
Christina Mänz
Coordination:
Ismar Kiseljakovic
Production and design:
Stefanie Fahlfeder und Cristina Lopez Gonzalez
Translation and editing:
Kristin Hüttmann, Joseph Piergrossi, Barbara Warmbein and Thomas Zoufal
Photos:
DESY, Christina Mänz, Marta Mayer, Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, privat, PT Jülich, SciCom Lab, Sunshine Film

Contact: inform@desy.de