Prof. Dr. Dr.h.c. Ulf-G. Meißner from the Helmholtz Institute for Radiation and Nuclear Physics at the University of Bonn received the Award for International Scientific Cooperation. The Chinese Academy of Sciences honors the physicist for his outstanding contributions to scientific cooperation. During a festive ceremony in Beijing, Academy President Jianguo Hou presented the scientist with the coveted medal. 

Junior-Professor Daqing Wang from the University of Bonn has received a Proof of Concept Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for his “MinCryo” project. With the grant of €150,000 over one year, the physicist will continue to prepare his research results for practical applications in industry. The technical solution developed by him and his team facilitates a wider and more resource-efficient access to cryogenic – extremely cold - optical imaging that combines microscopes with extremely cold temperatures.

The German Physical Society (DPG) is awarding Prof. Herbert Dreiner, Ph.D., from the Physics Institute of Bonn University, the Georg Kerschensteiner Prize 2026. He is being honored for his extraordinary commitment to making science accessible to a broad audience — in particular through the Bonn Physics Show, which he founded and has directed for many years. The award ceremony will take place on Tuesday, March 17, 2026, during the 89th DPG Annual Meeting in Erlangen. 

On the second of June we had the Career talk of the summer semester 2025. We were visited by Dr. Jolanta Zjupa of the FZJ (Research Center Juelich) who is part of the JSC (Juelich Supercomputing Center). Read more for a brief summary of her visit and the topics discussed in the consecutive informal meeting.

The Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Bonn will be represented in three Clusters of Excellence in the future - an impressive success that underlines the breadth and international visibility of its research. The University of Bonn was successful with a total of eight approved clusters in the nationwide Excellence Strategy and is therefore once again one of the absolute leaders in the German science system.

On Weiberfastnacht, after a 10-year break, the Physics Institutes once again held a carnival party in the foyer of the Wolfgang-Paul-Hörsaal.

From Monday, January 27 to Wednesday, January 29, 2025, 31 employees from the various workshops, the FTD and the PI administration traveled to CERN together. The aim of the excursion was to give non-scientific staff an insight into the experiments at CERN in which the Physikalisches Institut is involved.

On January 23, 2025, the Particle Café for interested pupils and students took place in Bonn. Our guest this time was Dr. Slavomira Stefkova, who told us about her exciting path in science. We also honored the regional winners of the “Physics Brawl” competition for their achievements.