16 July 2026

Photo: Lukas Haas

Informal interactions are an important part of graduate school life, fostering new collaborations and reinforcing existing relationships.

Three days full of exciting research highlights, discussions, and poster slams awaited the students during the CUI Graduate Summer School in Lübeck. The extensive program included 11 contributed talks, around 20 posters, and presentations covering topics across all areas of the cluster.

The Summer School is designed as an opportunity for PhD students and post-docs to take a little pause from their usual research life and spend three days focused on learning, internal networking, and relaxing. This journey became more memorable by the ambience of the UNESCO World Heritage medieval city of Lübeck. In addition to the science contributions from the graduates, the Summer School included introductory courses by invited external speakers on key subject areas critical to the cluster:

• “Electron optics in quantum materials” by Dr. Graham Baker from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden, Germany
• “Bridging the Gas–Solid Divide: High-Harmonic Generation as an Attosecond Probe of Liquids” by Dr. Angana Mondal from the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
• “Tailoring nanoscale light-matter coupling with Polaritons” by Dr. Niclas S. Müller from Freie Universität Berlin

The program also featured an invited talk by Malte Riedel, a freelance engineer working on Signal Processing and Biomedical Imaging, on “Handling motion in brain MRI – From functional MRI to ultra-high-field mesoscale imaging”. The talk sparked considerable interest among the students. Eileen Schwanold, diversity and equal opportunity officer at the Cluster of Excellence “CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter” led an interactive session on “Power (Abuse) in Academia - Creating Visibility for the Invisible”. The discussion encouraged the participants to reflect on creating a more inclusive, respectful, and supportive academic environment.

“The event was a great success”, the student representative resume. “In a room full of engaged young people, participants took part in inspiring discussions—from science topics to the pub quiz. Many attendees highlighted the quality of the scientific talks and the chance to connect and share ideas. In particular, the poster sessions received strong positive feedback. These informal interactions are an important part of school life, fostering new collaborations and reinforcing existing relationships.”

The organizers of the Summer School, Kalyani Chordiya, Sarodi Jonak Dutta, Benoît Richard, Karen Schäfer, and Tamme Wollweber, are hopeful that this experience will enable all the members to continue their research with renewed motivation and fresh ideas.  The team was supported by the CUI office in organizing the event, which took place from 10 to 12 June.