Sarah Embacher

Each year, Forbes Italia selects its 100 most successful women — executives, scientists, athletes, and artists who are leading and transforming the country. In 2026, Francesca is one of them. Congratulations to Francesca on this well-deserved recognition of her outstanding work! See the full list here.

Over the past few days in Innsbruck, we had the pleasure of welcoming talented bachelor, master, and early PhD students to explore the fascinating world of ultracold quantum matter.

The program featured twelve inspiring lectures by experts from Innsbruck, Vienna, and Trento, covering topics ranging from laser cooling and trapping to Bose–Einstein condensation, ultracold Fermi gases, ultracold molecules, strongly correlated quantum gases, and optical lattices. Participants also had the opportunity to visit the state-of-the-art laboratories at the Universität Innsbruck and the Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation (IQOQI) in Innsbruck, gaining firsthand insight into cutting-edge research.

A heartfelt thank you to all the lecturers for sharing their expertise, to the students for their enthusiasm, curiosity, and engaging discussions, and to everyone who contributed to making this event a success.

Thanks to my fellow organizers, Grimm Rudolf and Hanns-Christoph Naegerl, and to Silvia Bonazza for her outstanding administrative support in making this Summer School possible.

We hope this experience has inspired the next generation of researchers in quantum science, and we look forward to welcoming you again at future editions!

📸 Image credit: David Jordan / IQOQI

We congratulate Manex Ugarte-Egana from Mondragon University (Basque Country), who joined our group for his Bachelor thesis project from November 2025 to July 2026 and has now defended his excellent work on a ARTIQ-based control sytem for our new labs!