Illustration: artist’s rendering of the XUV-SHG on a titanium foil. Courtesy of the lab of Michael Zurch.
The College of Chemistry is pleased to announce that Assistant Professor of Chemistry Michael Zuerch has been awarded the 2021 Fresnel Prize for Fundamental Aspects for outstanding contributions to the field of ultrafast condensed-matter science and for the application of linear and nonlinear X-ray spectroscopies to the investigation of quantum phenomena. The award is for outstanding contributions to quantum electronics and optics made by a scientist under the age of 35.
About the EPS-QEOD prize:
The EPS-QEOD (Quantum Electronics and Optics Division) Prizes are a series of prestigious prizes and awards for outstanding research. This year's awards were presented in a special plenary and awards ceremony during CLEO®/Europe-EQEC 2021. The biannual conference traditionally held in Munich hosts the leading international gathering of manufacturers and customers of photonics products and technologies in Europe. The conference attracts exhibitors and over 30,000 researchers and professionals from fundamental and application-based photonics applications in industry, security, science, and medicine. For this year, due to COVID-19, the conference was virtual.
About Michael Zuerch
Prof. Zuerch joined the College of Chemistry in 2020 from an appointment in the Department of Chemistry at the Fritz Haber Institute as an independent Max Planck Research Group leader. Researchers in his lab are exploring structural, carrier, and spin dynamics in novel quantum materials, heterostructures and on surfaces and at interfaces to answer important questions in materials science and physical chemistry. His research program pursues a multidisciplinary approach that combines the exquisite possibilities that ultrafast X-ray spectroscopy and nanoimaging offer while working closely at the interface between material synthesis and theory groups. Researchers are developing novel nonlinear X-ray spectroscopies to study material properties on time scales down to the sub-femtosecond regime and on nanometer length scales to tackle challenging problems in quantum electronics, information storage, and solar energy conversion.