Faculty of Physics
Awards and Distinctions
Prof. Dietrich Wolf has been awarded an honorary doctorate from Budapest University of Technology and Economics. 30 years of joint research with 11 colleagues from Budapest have given rise to no fewer than 55 scientific articles, with research topics covering growth processes, granular matter, rheology, friction, and electrical transport in molecules and nanostructures. For the past five years, our two universities have also been involved in a partnership that allows a large number of students from the Energy Science programme to spend one year abroad at the University of Budapest.
Prof. Herbert Wagner – Honorary Doctor of the Faculty of Physics and Postdoctorate Supervisor of Prof. Hans Werner Diehl – received the Max Planck Medal from the German Physics Association in 2016. The department had already honoured him back in 1992 with the title of Doctor of Natural Sciences for his scientific achievements, and he gained international prestige as a result of many fundamental contributions to the theory of condensed matter and statistical mechanics. In receiving this award, Prof. Herbert Wagner is following in the footsteps of Prof. Robert Graham from the Faculty of Physics, who was also a recipient of the Max Planck Medal in 2008.
Dr Andreas Beckel received prize money of €2,000 for his dissertation. This award was presented to him by Dr Joachim Bonn (Chairman of the Board of the Sparkasse Duisburg), Prof. Ulrich Radtke (Rector of the University of Duisburg-Essen) and Mayor Erkan Kocalar. In his dissertation, Mr Andreas Beckel examines the electronic properties of self-organised quantum dots, which are coupled with a two-dimensional electron gas by means of the tunnel effect.
The Gottschalk-Diederich-Baedeker Prize was awarded to PD Dr Carolin Schmitz-Antoniak for her outstanding achievements. A teaching physicist at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), her work looks at the extensive field of nanoscale magnetic materials, which can be found both in medicine (for example, in nuclear magnetic resonance imaging or tumour treatment) as well as in future data storage media. This prize is worth €5,000.
Prof. Volker Buck has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the Francisk Skorina Gomel State University in Belarus. He was chosen for this award due to the work he has undertaken not only in training scientists, but also in establishing international cooperations. As early as the 1990s, Mr Buck initiated a lively exchange with the local university shortly after Belarus gained independence. The honorary doctorate was awarded as part of the university’s 85th anniversary celebrations.
In 2015, Ms Bärbel Maullu received the Diversity Prize from the University of Duisburg-Essen for her exceptional commitment and dedication in this field. Long before the terms ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ had even made it onto the radar, she was already finding individual solutions for students who, for personal or private reasons, had problems following the standard courses for the practical element of their teacher training, whether that might be due to having children, needing to care for their parents, or suffering from ill health.
Dr Andreas Reichert received the Diversity Award from the University of Duisburg-Essen in the category of Diversity Commitment in 2016. He was honoured for his involvement in the ‘freestyle physics’ competition for pupils, the Evonik pupil laboratory and the Night of Physics event, all of which aim to provide pupils with an insight into research and study at the Faculty of Physics with a particular focus on pupils from families with low-education backgrounds.
Prof. Axel Lorke has been elected to the Board of Trustees of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. The experimental physicist teaches and conducts research at the Faculty of Physics and Centre for Nanointegration (CENIDE) at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE). “As the acquisition of young talent in the MINT subjects is one of the fundamental educational goals of the Deutsches Museum, we are very pleased that Professor Lorke is now a member of our board of trustees,” explains Prof. Wolfgang Heckl, President of the Deutsches Museum. “He has never failed in his ability to pass on his enthusiasm for the natural sciences, whether he’s dealing with his own students or laypeople.”
Prof. Michael Farle received the 2017 IEEE Distinguished Lecturer Prize from the IEEE Magnetics Society (worth USD 20,000), and became not only Adjunct Professor of Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, but also Director of the ‘Centre for Functionalised Magnetic Materials’ (FunMagMa), Kaliningrad, Russia.