News

The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) has approved a new special research area on quantum systems of neutral atoms. We are excited to announce that our group will be part of the project, together with the groups led by Hannes Bernien and Hannes Pichler from Innsbruck, and many more national and international collaborators.

The FWF will provide funding of approximately €4 million over a period of four years. The goal of the collaborative research network “Highly Connected Quantum Systems of Neutral Atoms” is to achieve a high degree of networking and quantum mechanical entanglement of many particles, even those that are far apart. With the realization and investigation of quantum systems that are now becoming experimentally accessible for the first time, the planned cooperation promises not only a deeper understanding of novel states of matter, but also practical breakthroughs in the field of quantum technology.

Our group went on a trip to South Tyrol to go hiking at the astonishing Barbian Waterfalls. For dinner, we visited a Buschenschank, where we enjoyed the Tyrolean tradition of Törggelen — a sociable, extended meal featuring traditional regional dishes such as chestnuts roasted over a wood fire, as well as locally produced sausages and wine.

Today, Elena Poli from our Theory team successfully defended her PhD thesis, titled “Unveiling the Superfluid and Solid Behaviour in Dipolar Supersolids”!

Elena began her PhD journey in 2019, she was the first member of our Theory team, together with our postdoc at the time, Tom Bland. She played a major role when our group experimentally observed a dipolar supersolid in 2D and extended this work by studying rotating supersolids in 2D, in close collaboration with the Er-Dy lab. She also spent a research stay abroad in New Zealand, joining the group of Prof. Blair Blakie. Most recently, she explored a possible application of her research to glitches in rotating neutron stars.

In total, Elena achieved an impressive list of 10 publications during her PhD.

Beyond her scientific contributions, we thank Elena for organizing barbecues in a wonderfully responsible way, for sharing her excellent taste in music and TV shows, and for carrying our team through long sports nights with her marvelous volleyball skills.

Thank you, Elena — and we wish you all the very best for the future!

We are proud to announce that Eva Casotti has won first place in the Euregio Young Researcher Award 2025.

Now in its 14th edition, the award invited young researchers from the Euregio region (Tyrol–South Tyrol–Trentino) to submit their work on the theme “Competitiveness and the Euregio as a Business Location.”

During the final round at the Euregio Days 2025 in Alpbach, the finalists presented their research to a jury of leading experts from research institutions across all three Euregio regions. Eva convinced the jury with our work on “Observation of vortices in a dipolar supersolid”, carried out at the IQOQI in Innsbruck and University of Innsbruck, and recently published in Nature.

The award was presented by Arno Kompatscher (Governor of South Tyrol), Anton Mattle (Governor of Tyrol), and Simone Marchiori (Regional Minister from Trentino). Please click here to find more information about the event.

Congratulations to Eva on this outstanding achievement!

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!