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2017/04/12
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New Leading Scientists at DESY

Melanie Schnell and Nina Rohringer strengthen DESY's Photon Science

Two new Leading Scientists are strengthening DESY’s Photon Science department: Nina Rohringer and Melanie Schnell have been appointed as professors of the universities of Hamburg and Kiel jointly with DESY. Rohringer is an expert in ultrafast, non-linear X-ray physics. Schnell specialises in the structure and dynamics of molecules. Both scientists headed research groups at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) on DESY’s Hamburg campus before this latest appointment.

Melanie Schnell. Foto: DESY, Gesine Born
As from 1 March, Schnell is Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Christian Albrechts University of Kiel. At DESY, she heads the research group “Spectroscopy of Molecular Processes”. Her main focus of research lies in gaining a better understanding of chemical processes on a molecular level, ultimately with a view to controlling and manipulating these. To achieve these goals, she and her group are developing new spectroscopic methods, especially in the field of so-called rotational spectroscopy.

In addition, Schnell’s research group is examining various questions raised by astrochemistry. “We would like to understand which chemical processes take place in interstellar space, an environment that is characterised by extreme conditions such as low temperatures and intense radiation – and why,” explains Schnell. “To do this, it is important among other things to understand the photophysics of key molecules, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, for which experiments at DESY’s free-electron laser FLASH are ideally suited.” This work is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) via an ERC Starting Grant.

Nina Rohringer. Foto: DESY, Gesine Born
Rohringer became a professor at the University of Hamburg on 1 February and is setting up a research group at DESY which is to look at the “Theory of Ultrafast X-ray Physics”. “We are studying fundamental process in the interaction between ultra-short, high-intensity X-ray pulses produced by free-electron lasers and matter,” says Rohringer. Among other things, the group is interested in the feasibility of carrying out new types of experiments at X-ray free electron lasers (XFEL), but also in entirely new types of X-ray lasers themselves.

A further focus of the group’s research will be to study quantum mechanical processes at high temporal resolutions using X-ray spectroscopy. To this end, Rohringer’s group will also be performing experiments at FLASH, as well as at the European X-ray Free-Electron Laser, European XFEL, which is currently going into operation and whose main shareholder is DESY.

 

DESY's Leading Scientists:
http://www.desy.de/about_desy/leading_scientists/

 







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