Young researcher award for innovative theses presented
Clean water, the elimination of space debris, new methods for medical endoscopy, and more powerful lasers – once again innovative theses with a special connection to applied photonics were honored with the Applied Photonics Award, the young researcher award by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF. The award was presented to the four prize winners on September 29 virtually by Nobel Prize winner Reinhard Genzel as part of the Photonics Days Jena.
A jury of experts, consisting of representatives from science and industry, had previously selected the award-winning theses. A total of three theses were awarded in the categories bachelor, master / diploma, and dissertation. In addition, the jury awarded a jury award for high potential for utilization and application.
As part of her bachelor's thesis, Katrin Bihr (Furtwangen University) developed a method for determining the depth of an object point in front of the endoscope. The ability to measure tissue and tumors inside the body can represent a major advance for diagnostics and treatment in medicine. This can, for example, enable procedures in cancer therapy to be carried out more gently or in a more targeted manner. But the approach to depth measurement is also applicable beyond the field of endoscopy: stereo camera systems can potentially be used wherever the camera position is fixed relative to the object surface and only a small space is available.
In her master's thesis, Luise Hoffmann (Clausthal University of Technology) presents a newly developed three-stage femtosecond laser alloying process. Here, the catalyst material is incorporated into the surface from thin films. This method is applied to produce stable metal alloys of molybdenum as catalyst on nickel net electrodes for the hydrogen evolution side (HER) in alkaline electrolysis of water (AEL), in addition to creating a structured surface.
Dr Tobias Schnabel (Bauhaus Universität Weimar) describes in his dissertation how water can be purified with the help of a photonic system. Schnabel’s work deals with the use of UV-A LEDs as an excitation source for carrier-bound photocatalysts. For this purpose, new reaction concepts and catalysts for the oxidation of pharmaceutical micropollutants in the matrix of municipal wastewater were developed and investigated.
The jury prize for high potential for utilization and application was awarded to Dr Christoph Stihler (Friedrich Schiller University Jena) for his PhD thesis work on “Transverse mode instability – Insights into modal energy transfer in high-power fiber lasers”.
Link: Applied Photonics Award c/o Fraunhofer IOF, Jena, Germany
