The Working Group Inspiration Fair (AIM), organized by the Physics Student Council in collaboration with the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy, was held on Wednesday, January 15, 2025, at the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics (KIP) and the Physical Institute (PI). This event brought together research groups in physics and related fields, offering an excellent opportunity for students from all semesters to connect with researchers in a relaxed and informal environment.

We're proud to share that our postdoc, Marta Murillo, has successfully completed the prestigious “Sign Up! Careerbuilding” programme – an initiative by the Max Planck Society in collaboration with EAF Berlin. EAF Berlin is a renowned network that supports equal opportunities, diversity, and work-life balance in politics and industry.

This year-long programme, tailored for female postdocs, focuses on developing leadership skills, preparing participants for leadership roles in science, and fostering a strong, career-oriented network. It aims to empower women in the crucial early stages of their scientific careers, helping them navigate their individual career paths with confidence and clarity.

Marta was selected from a pool of applicants across all Max Planck Institutes in Germany and took part in four intensive training modules over the course of the year. She successfully completed the programme in December, gaining valuable experience and connections along the way.

We’re thrilled to celebrate Marta’s achievement and can’t wait to see where her career takes her next!

This year, Christmas was celebrated at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics with a special event featuring the choir and a small Advent wreath-making activity. Furthermore, this year the institute's official Christmas greeting cards featured an image from the ULCD group, a microscope image of a liquid crystal.

The symposium brought together two quite different communities, the THz device and measurement community with the liquid crystal device, molecular design and modelling community.

Dr. Laura Cattaneo, has been honored within the Mildred Dresselhaus Guest Professorship Program 2024 of the Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging (CUI), that acknowledges outstanding established scientist and highly promising young scientists. The Program includes an extended research stay at the Cluster of Excellence "CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter" as well as prize money of € 10,000 for the Junior Award. Congratulations, Laura, on this well-deserved recognition!

After several years, the division, led by Professor Thomas Pfeifer, held a retreat at Ebernburg Castle. The program included short talks and poster presentations on the latest scientific advances by our group leaders, students, and postdocs. It provided us with a unique opportunity to gain an overview of our broad spectrum of research activities, as well as to ask questions, share ideas, and contribute to the future direction of our divisions' scientific explorations.

​The Max Planck Annual Meeting – Networking Symposium 2024 was a new addition to the Max Planck Society's annual gathering, held on June 13, 2024, at the Harnack-Haus in Berlin. Designed to foster cross-sectional exchange, the symposium provided group leaders from various sections an opportunity to present their research. Nineteen selected group leaders delivered concise three-minute presentations, akin to elevator pitches, followed by moderated discussions. This format aimed to make complex research topics accessible to a broader audience within the Max Planck community

During the academic semester, the Pfeifer Division organizes a weekly seminar led by predoctoral students and postdoctoral staff where the progress of research conducted to date is presented. In this case, our Master's student, Natalia Copete, presented her work entitled Temperature Controlled LC Based Flat Jet.

The 5th AttoChem Workshop, organized under the umbrella of the COST Action CA18222 (www.attochem.eu), was held from February 28 to March 1, 2024, at the University of La Laguna in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. The workshop took place in the heart of the historic city of La Laguna, a UNESCO World Heritage site, providing a beautiful and culturally rich backdrop for the event.

The workshop brought together leading researchers from chemistry, physics, and materials science to discuss the latest advancements in attosecond science and its applications in chemical dynamics. Participants had the opportunity to explore innovative techniques for probing ultrafast processes in molecules, with a special focus on attosecond spectroscopy, ultrafast electron dynamics, and the role of attosecond science in advancing our understanding of chemical reactions.

In this case, the Group leader, Laura Cattaneo, had the opportunity to give a plenary talk about the research progress made in the Group, while postdoc Marta Murillo presented her recent results in high harmonic scopteroscopy in liquid crystals using a flatjet device.

The 15th Femtochemistry Conference took place from Sunday, 30 July 2023 to Friday, 4 August 2023, at the Henry Ford Building on the Freie Universität Berlin campus (Garystraße 35, 14195 Berlin). The conference brought together leading experts and emerging researchers from around the world to explore the latest breakthroughs in femtochemistry, a field dedicated to understanding chemical reactions on the timescale of femtoseconds (10^-15 seconds).

The event featured a rich program of cutting-edge research, with presentations on ultrafast spectroscopy, molecular dynamics, and the role of femtosecond lasers in probing the fundamental processes of chemistry. Attendees had the opportunity to engage with pioneering work in areas such as energy conversion, reaction dynamics, and material science, where femtochemistry plays a crucial role in observing and controlling reactions as they unfold.

Our PhD student Patrick Friebel gave a talk titled “Ultrafast Terahertz Response of Thermotropic Liquid Crystals” during the event, where he presented his latest research on the ultrafast dynamics of liquid crystals under terahertz excitation.

The ULCD research group has initiated a collaboration with the University of Bern group led by Professor Andrea Cannizo to conduct transient absorption experiments on dilute liquid crystal samples. Thanks to this collaboration, the device, currently under development for the delivery of liquid crystals, has been tested for the first time, yielding satisfactory results.

Dr. Laura Cattaneo was selected by the MPG for a position as an independent Max Planck Research Group (MPRG) leader. She will set up her group from May 2020 "ULCD - ultrafast liquid crystal dynamics" at the MPIK.