Awards and Prizes

Dr. Anne-Sophie Munser, a scientist in the Functional Surfaces and Coatings department at Fraunhofer IOF, was awarded the Dr.-Ing Siegfried Werth Prize for her dissertation on "Analysis of microbial cells and cell aggregates using angle resolved light scattering". Her outstanding work in the field of highly sensitive scattered light analysis for the detection and analysis of bacteria opens up promising applications in infection research and food safety. The prize was awarded on September 26 as part of the Photonics Days Jena.

Carolin Rothhardt, a scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF, was honored with the WLT Prize for her outstanding achievements in the field of joining technologies. The award was presented on September 16 at the LANE 2024 conference in Fürth and is endowed with 5,000 euros.

She and her team are researching innovative joining technologies for optical components for high-performance lasers and have now been recognized for their outstanding scientific achievements with the prize of the Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft Lasertechnik und Photonik e.V. (WLT). The award was presented to the scientist at the 13th CIRP Conference on Photonic Technologies LANE 2024.

In close collaboration, Prof. Dr. Jens Limpert and Dr. Jan Rothhardt have developed new insights and technologies for the realization of EUV sources with synchrotron-like performance. By using high-power femtosecond fiber laser systems and the concept of coherently combining multiple fiber amplifiers, they have developed highly harmonic sources with high conversion efficiency, whose photon flux exceeds the state of the art by several orders of magnitude.

A team of four scientists from Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF have been awarded the Thuringian Research Prize for their research into customized 2D materials. The award for scientific excellence in the category "Applied Research" was presented today at a ceremony at Ilmenau University of Technology and is endowed with 25,000 euros.

The prizewinners - Prof. Dr. Andrey Turchanin, Dr. Antony George, Dr. Christof Neumann and Dr. Falk Eilenberger (Fraunhofer IOF) - have developed a range of innovative methods to produce and utilize tailor-made 2D materials for photonic, electronic and optoelectronic applications.

From April 7-11, 2024, Strasbourg hosted this year's SPIE Photonics Europe, a major interdisciplinary industry event that brings together numerous players from the fields of optics and photonics. The conference presented a wide range of topics, including digital optics, quantum technologies, optical imaging, sensing and metrology.

Part of the international event was the sub-conference "Specialty Optical Fibres VIII". As part of this, Gonzalo Palma-Vega, scientist at Fraunhofer IOF, presented his research work on "Static and dynamic mode interaction in high-average power polarization maintaining fibers". Thanks to his innovative research approach and the excellent quality of his presentation, he was able to convince the expert jury and was awarded the "Best Student Paper Award".

The Order of Merit, also known colloquially as the Federal Cross of Merit, is the highest recognition awarded by the Federal Republic of Germany for services to the common good. It is awarded for political, economic-social and intellectual achievements. On behalf of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the official presentation of the insignia was made today by Thuringia's Minister President Bodo Ramelow in the Weimarhalle in Weimar.

The award was made in overall recognition of his achievements in research and science, including his success in acquiring third-party funding, academic publications and supervised qualification theses. Prof. Tünnermann's successes in the development of international degree courses and his commitment to political consulting and scientific network development in Germany as a research location were also taken into account.

This year's participation in SPIE Photonics West in San Francisco was crowned with success for participating researchers from Jena: three "Best Student Presentation Awards" went to scientists from Fraunhofer IOF and the Institute of Applied Physics for the particular scientific relevance and quality of their presentations.

The latest research developments and technologies in the field of optics and photonics attracted numerous representatives from science and industry to San Francisco from January 30 to February 1, 2024 for the largest international conference for photonics, SPIE Photonics West. The international event included the conferences "Frontiers in Ultrafast Optics: Biomedical, Scientific, and Industrial Applications XXIV" and "Fiber Lasers XXI: Technology and Systems", at which scientists from Jena were also represented.

Particularly scientifically outstanding contents and their presentation were honored at both conferences with "Best Student Presentation Awards". This year, three researchers from Jena were able to convince the conference committee: Maximilian Karst (IAP), Friedrich Möller (IOF) and Mathias Lenski (IAP).

An interdisciplinary team of researchers has developed a novel, high-resolution and lensless microscope that works with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light. The microscope enables imaging of biological samples with a record resolution of up to 16 nanometers.

This special interdisciplinary collaboration across the top research institutes at Beutenberg was honored with the Science Prize of the Beutenberg Campus Jena e.V., which was awarded for the first time in the category "Excellent Interdisciplinary Cooperation".  

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research called for ideas on how quantum technologies can be depicted in creative and humorous caricatures. Johannes Kretzschmar from the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Dr. Falk Eilenberger and Dr. Thorsten Goebel from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF were awarded for their joint contribution.

The aim of the caricatures is to illustrate the technical background, social aspects and technological solutions of IT security research in a way that is understandable and tongue-in-cheek for the general public. The idea submitted by Kretzschmar, Eilenberger and Goebel is specifically dedicated to the transmission of quantum information. This is fundamentally challenging, but especially on the so-called "last meter", i.e. the transmission of quantum information to the end user. The caricature based on an idea by the Jena scientists is intended to illustrate this transmission of quantum states to the recipient in a humorous way.

Dr. Martin Landmann, scientist in the Department of Imaging and Sensor Technology at Fraunhofer IOF, was awarded the Dr.-Ing. Siegfried Werth Prize for his dissertation on "Fast and accurate 3D shape measurement using pattern projection and stereo imaging in thermal infrared".

The innovative work serves as the basis for the world's first measuring system developed at Fraunhofer IOF that can capture the surface shape of transparent objects in just a few seconds: goQUALITY3D and its further development goROBOT3D.

Dr. Tobias Vogl is head of the "Integrated Quantum Systems" research group, which is based at the Institute of Applied Physics (IAP) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF. In May 2023, at the age of just 31, he was awarded the "Young Scientist Award" 2023 by the Beutenberg Campus Jena e. V. for the exceptional quality of his scientific work.

A new type of satellite technology, which has already been tested on the International Space Station (ISS) in the form of a prototype called "LisR", will make it possible in future to irrigate plants as needed and ensure the sustainable use of this vital resource.

The innovative technology is the LisR infrared camera, short for "Longwave infrared sensing demonstratoR". For this development, a team of researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, the Ernst Mach Institute, the Fraunhofer EMI and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF as well as the two spin-offs constellr GmbH and SPACEOPTIX GmbH have been awarded the Fraunhofer Prize "Technology for People and their Environment".

Committed young talent is an important building block for science and research. Young talent is particularly in demand in quantum technologies. With the "Quantum Futur Award", the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) would therefore like to recognize outstanding theses in the field of applied quantum technologies. Fraunhofer researcher Uday Chandrashekara's pitch at the award ceremony on November 25th won him first place in the "Master's Thesis" category as well as the audience award.

New hope in the fight against cancer: a team of researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF, together with industrial partner Varian Medical Systems, has developed a new type of system for the radiotherapy of tumours that improves the chances of curing cancer. The scientists have been awarded the Joseph von Fraunhofer Prize for their complete system, which is ready for production.

Scientist Dr. Christian Mühlig from Fraunhofer IOF won ‘The Arthur Guenther Best Poster Award’ at this year's SPIE Conference ‘SPIE Laser Damage’ in Rochester (USA) for "Nonlinear absorption in TiO2 and HfO2 thin films".

In their paper, Christian Mühlig's team presented the investigation of the non-linear absorption properties for individual amorphous TiO2 and HfO2 layers (PIAD) on SiO2 substrate.  

A team of researchers from Fraunhofer IOF won the Orbbec Best Paper Award at this year's SPIE Conference ‘Dimensional Optical Metrology and Inspection for Practical Applications XI’ in Orlando  ("Human-robot interaction booth with shape-from-silhouette-based real-time proximity sensor").

In collaboration with partners from industry, Fraunhofer IOF has developed a measuring cell within which a fast industrial robot and a human worker can work simultaneously and safely. A sensor system consisting of four cameras determines the position of the human and calculates the distance to the robot. Based on this information, the robot can adjust its speed or stop completely.

At this year's SPIE Conference ‘Dimensional Optical Metrology and Inspection for Practical Applications XI’ in Orlando, the Orbbec Best Student Paper Award went to "Optimisation of a stereo image analysis by densify the disparity map based on a deep learning stereo matching framework" to Christina Junger (TU Ilmenau) and Gunther Notni (Fraunhofer IOF, TU Ilmenau).

Josefine Canis has completed her training as a physics laboratory technician at the Fraunhofer IOF as the best in the state. She was honoured for this achievement by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce of Eastern Thuringia and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Canis' responsible trainer at Fraunhofer IOF, Antje Oelschläger, was also recognised for her excellent performance as a supervisor.

Researchers at Fraunhofer IOF and their partner have been honoured with the Lothar Späth Award for the development of precision metal-optical instruments. The high-performance telescope GALA is to be used in the ESA mission JUICE planned for 2023 to explore Jupiter's moon Ganymede. The award ceremony took place on 19 November in Stuttgart.

Group Leader Dr. Stefan Heist and his team were named "Top Innovation 2021" for the new 3D measurement method in thermal infrared. "This is a wonderful confirmation of our intensive work in recent years and a great motivation to continue developing our 3D thermal system," says Heist.