From left to right: Heinz Graafsma (new chair of the DESY Photon Science Award Committee), the 'DESY Photon Science Method and Instrumentation' award winners Önder Akçaalan, Marcus Seidel and Uwe Grosse-Wortmann (all FS-LA). (Photo: DESY)
On the occasion of the DESY Photon Science divisional meeting on 15 December 2023, Önder Akçaalan, Marcus Seidel, Uwe Grosse-Wortmann and Matthias Kreuzeder were honoured with the 'DESY Photon Science Instrumentation and Methods Award' and 'DESY Photon Science Infinite Miles Award' respectively.
The 'DESY Photon Science Instrumentation and Methods Award 2023' was granted to Marcus Seidel, Önder Akçaalan and Uwe Grosse-Wortmann for their achievements in replacing the pump probe laser for the planar-grating-monochromator beamlines at the soft-X-ray free-electron laser FLASH within only one year by a newly in-house developed system. It utilizes the novel ‘nonlinear multi-plate multi-pass cell’ technique to compress 1 ps laser pulses to 60 fs with high efficiency. This laser system today serves 60% of all pump-probe experiments at FLASH and has an availability to users of over 99%.
The 'DESY Photon Science Infinite Miles Award 2023' was awarded to Matthias Kreuzeder for his exceptional commitment supporting the division as an event manager. Special mention deserves the annual DESY Photon Science Users' Meeting which takes place together with the Eurpean XFEL users’ meeting. The number of participants and of satellite workshops have almost doubled since 2012. In this context alone, 150 satellite meetings, poster sessions with 3700 posters and 580 industry exhibitors and a total of 14,000 participants were organised under the leadership of Matthias Kreuzeder together with the respective cross-group teams.
Starting from this year, the DESY Photon Science awards will be presented annually. They include a certificate and prize money. The Photon Science award committee selects the successful award winners. All committee members are appointed by the DESY Photon Science directorate.
