The Walther-Meißner-Institute of BAdW and its partners at TUM, LMU, MPQ, and Deutsches Museum were once again successful in the highly competitive Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments. As announced by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Cluster of Excellence Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST) will receive funding for seven more years through 2032 to further strengthen its role as a world-leading hub for quantum research. MCQST succeeded in building a vibrant ecosystem of over 60 research groups working across all areas of quantum science and we are very happy that we can continue this success story, the former MCQST spokesperson Rudolf Gross points out.
Our former Bachelor and Master student Johanna Fischer (now at Spintec Grenoble, France) receives the 2025 EMA Young Scientist Award. This Prize is awarded every year by the European Magnetism Association in the fields of fundamental or applied magnetism to a scientist in an early career stage (PhD no more than 5 yeras ago). Johanna did both her Bachelor's thesis (2014) and her Master's thesis (2017) with us in the Walther-Meißner-Institut. We congratulate Johanna on this great success!
On April 4th, the Schoolkindergarten Weltentdecker from Neufahrn b. Freising visited Walther-Meißner-Institut to learn more about magnetism and low temperature physics. The visit was aligned with the pedagogical concept of the Schoolkindergarten, where the children have a weekly natural science class, performing various simple experiments and getting first insights into physics and chemistry sciences. During this visit, total of 19 pre-school children got their first touch to the superconducting levitation (Meißner effect), freezing of matter and Gummi Bärchen in liquid nitrogen (this was full success!), and other fascinating properties of the cryogenic liquids.
Rudolf Gross received the Werner Heisenberg Medal of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in recognition of his special services in promoting international scientific cooperation and as a long-standing member of the Selection Committee for the Humboldt and Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Awards. "It was a very fulfilling task to support the AvH Foundation in granting up to 100 awards every year to internationally leading researchers of all disciplines from abroad in recognition of their academic excellence", Rudolf Gross states. "Promoting international coopoeration will becomes even more important today to fill in trenches caused by politics", he adds.
The German Science foundation (DFG) funds ‘Chiral phonons for spintronics (CHIPS)‘, which is the only physics focused research unit within this funding round. CHIPS wants to understand the physical properties of these chiral phonons in connection with magnetism and spintronics, i.e. in connection with the spin of electrons. How can chiral phonons be generated, transported and recorded? In order to get to the bottom of these questions, the group is looking at time and length scales at the atomic level that have not yet been investigated. This should make it possible to gain new fundamental insights into phonons and potentially identify new spintronic applications. The collaborative effort unites research teams at the University of Konstanz, the University of Augsburg, the Freie Universiät Berlin, the Max-Born-Institut Berlin, the RWTH Aachen, and the Walther-Meißner-Institut.
On April 1st, 2025, Prof. Rudolf Gross retires as Scientific Director of the Walther-Meißner-Institute after shaping the development of the institute for nearly 25 years. During this time, he established WMI as a leading research center in the fields of superconductivity, magnetism, materials science, and quantum technologies, as well as one of the key institutes in the Munich quantum science ecosystem. Today, we celebrate his last official working day with a traditional Weißwurstessen.
Thank you, Rudolf, for everything you have done for the institute!
