Annual Meeting: Two outstanding researchers honored with Mildred Dresselhaus Prize

20 October 2020

Photo: CUI

Dr. Caterina Vozzi and Dr. Giulia Fulvia Mancini have been awarded the Mildred Dresselhaus Prize 2020 at the annual meeting of the Cluster of Excellence CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter. Since the meeting could not take place in Hohwacht on the Baltic Sea as usual, the laudators, Prof. Francesca Calegari and Prof. Markus Drescher, congratulated in virtual space. The prize includes a research stay in Hamburg, a certificate and prize money of €20,000 for the senior prizewinner and €10,000 for the junior prizewinner.

Those who were able to arrange it have regularly traveled to the Cluster's annual meeting in Hohwacht on the Baltic Sea in recent years. After all, this date has developed into a very good opportunity to meet new colleagues, exchange research results and discuss the activities of the cluster. Last year, the Mildred Dresselhaus Prize was also awarded for the first time in this special setting, which now had to be replaced by virtual space in view of the pandemic. This, however, made it easier for the Italian prizewinners and guest speaker Prof. Elspeth Garman from Great Britain to attend the ceremony.

In 2015 Prof. Elspeth Garman herself was awarded the Mildred Dresselhaus Prize. The molecular biophysicist emphasized how rewarding her time at the cluster has been, especially the formal and informal meetings with both experienced colleagues and young emerging researchers. The exchange had also triggered some developments in her own research group at the University of Oxford.

Senior Laureate Dr. Caterina Vozzi expressed thanks for the honor. The Mildred Dresselhaus Guest Professorship Program is an excellent opportunity for her to exchange even more information on the topic of gender inclusion and to be a visible role model "until we come to a point where ideally we are all the same as researchers and can solely focus on scientific cooperation," she said in her acceptance speech. The research director at the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnology (CNR-IFN) in Milan, Italy, hopes to spend five months in Hamburg next year and to conduct research with Prof. Francesca Calegari in the field of attosecond physics.

"Caterina was an inspiration and a role model for me and my work and I nominated her for the award, so it is a particular pleasure to be here and virtually award her today," emphasized Francesca Calegari, lead scientist at DESY and a professor at Universität Hamburg, in her laudatory speech.

Junior awardee Dr. Giulia Fulvia Mancini is P.I. of the ERC Starting Grant ULTRAIMAGE and Research Group Leader at the Physics Department of the University of Pavia, Italy, one of the oldest academic institutions worldwide. 2019 has been a particularly successful year for her with various awards, Prof. Markus Drescher of Universität Hamburg praised her career. Due to her scientific achievements, the scientific world is wide open to her and he is looking forward to working with her. As she has been involved in many mentoring activities in the past, both in Switzerland and the USA, she will also be a great asset for the young researchers in the cluster.

"It is a great honor for me to receive this award. Professor Mildred Dresselhaus is a role model that I look up to with admiration and gratitude," said Dr. Giulia Mancini. She is very much looking forward to her research stay at the Cluster and the future opportunities for collaboration, “because more answers can be found at the intersection of the ultrafast and the ultrasmall”. In her experiments, Dr. Mancini combines electron and X-ray beams to study the structure and dynamics of matter.

Also view Mildred Dresselhaus Award 2020 for extraordinary scientists announced