Center for Ultracold Atoms and Quantum Gases, IExP and IQOQI, Innsbruck
Category for non scientific news
Congratulations to Lauritz Klaus who successfully defended his PhD thesis! Lauritz did some amazing work on supersolids and vortices in the Er-Dy lab. He is well-known for always bringing a good mood into the group, fantastic jokes and eating huge amounts of yoghurt. He is now a PostDoc in the Erbium lab if Rob Smith in Oxford. Goodbye and we wish you all the best for your future, Lauritz!
From July 9-11, the 2025 edition of the Young Atom Opticians Conference (YAO) took place here in Innsbruck!
A huge thank you goes out to Clemens Ulm and Eva Casotti, PhD students from our group, and Johanna Hennebichler and Alberto Canali, PhD students from Rudi Grimms group, for organizing the event.
We also want to thank all speakers, participants and sponsors. The week was packed with insightful talks, poster sessions, social events, a gender equality talk, a startup panel, industry presentations, and lab tours.
For more information about YAO 2025, including a full list of the invited speakers, partner institutions and sponsors, visit https://yao.iqoqi.at/. If you are interested in hosting YAO 2027, contact us via yao2025@oeaw.ac.at.
On a nice summer evening, our group enjoyed cold drinks and delicious food together with familiy & friends.
The highlights of the evening were a pot of Zaziki and the impressive skills of the Er-Dy team of organizing the BBQ grill in time. Most notably, Leonardo won against Clemens in the final round of an epic pingpong tornament that showcased both impressive skills in the sport as well as astonishing trick shots (accompanied by the permanent threat of FF’s dog Pincho stealing the pingpong ball).
Congratulations to Eva for winning the UIBK “Best Student Paper Award” in the Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics!
The prize was awarded for her paper, “Observation of vortices in a dipolar supersolid” published in the Nature journal here. You can also read about the paper in the press releases by the UIBK.
The ceremony for the award took place on Tuesday, June 24 at the main university in Innsbruck. You can find more details about the ceremony and the other award winners here.
We’re excited to share that our group is featured in the ORF Tirol documentary “The Future Begins Now – Innsbruck at the Center of Quantum Research” (in German), part of the Österreich-Bild series.
In the documentary, Éric Berdaguer explores how Innsbruck became a world-leading hub for quantum research. The story begins in the 1990s, when Anton Zeilinger—later awarded the Nobel Prize—laid the groundwork for quantum science in Tirol and helped put Innsbruck on the map. The film then shifts to the present, highlighting today’s cutting-edge research, including a visit to our labs and interviews with Francesca and other members of our group.
📺 Watch the full documentary here.
📰 Read the quantA article about the documentary here.
The group went out to Bergeralm on the 5th of March for some night skiing (and rodeln for the non-skiiers)!