XFEL: Imaging of matter cluster is excellent

On Thursday 27 September, the German Research Foundation, the German Council of Science and Humanities, and the Joint Science Conference announced the successful entries of the latest round of the national Excellence Cluster competition. Hamburg was successful in four out of four submitted entries, all coordinated by the Universität Hamburg. European XFEL is partner in the cluster ‘Advanced Imaging of Matter (AIM)’, a successor to the Excellence Cluster ‘Centre for Ultrafast Imaging (CUI)’. The exact amount of funding received will be announced over the next few days.

European XFEL Managing Director Prof. Robert Feidenhans’l said: “This is a tremendous achievement for the University, but also for the metropolitan area of Hamburg in general. We congratulate our colleagues from Universität Hamburg and are very proud to be part of the Advanced Imaging of Matter cluster. We look forward to working with our partners to further advance the pioneering work of the CUI network.”

AIM brings together partners from across the disciplines of physics, chemistry and biology to use the unique research opportunities at DESY and European XFEL to study how and why atoms move as they do, and how this influences the specific functions of molecules. The partners of AIM are DESY, the Max-Planck-Institute for the Structure and Dynamic of Matter, and European XFEL.

On Wednesday 26 September the German research organization Helmholtz announced the founding of several new graduate schools including “Data Science in Hamburg – Helmholtz Graduate School for the Structure of Matter”, or DASHH. The graduate school will give talented young scientists from around the world the chance to work with experts in Hamburg on a range of data science topics including, for example, developing software solutions for data management, and designing completely new automated data science methods. European XFEL is one of eight partners from Hamburg and north Germany.

Feidenhans’l said: “Facilities such as European XFEL are now producing more and more data, and thereby opening up new avenues for data analysis, mining and modelling. It is crucial that we bring the best minds from across the globe to Hamburg to develop this growing field, and I am very excited that we are a part of this new opportunity.” Partners are DESY, Universität Hamburg, Technische Universität Hamburg, European XFEL, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Infektionsforschung, Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, Max-Planck-Institut für Struktur und Dynamik der Materie and Helmut-Schmidt-Universität.