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| Venue of the festivities: The TRUMPF restaurant "Blautopf" |
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| | On July 9, 2010 the Berthold Leibinger Stiftung awarded its laser technology prizes for the sixth time. Not only had the 50th anniversary of the Laser made it a special year, there were some more changes: First - the prize money had been raised, Secondly - the venue of the prize ceremony was for first time the architecturally remarkable TRUMPF restaurant “Blautopf. The large hall allowed to welcome 400 guests from politics, economy, science and media. |
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| The prize winners were in the focus of the event. A short film with a summary presentation of their work introduced them to the audience.
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One highlight of the event was the speech of the of the Max Planck Society, Professor Peter Gruss, on “Ethics in Science”
The lecture by Gábor Paál, science editor at the German public radio Südwestrundfunk on “Shadowy Existence” took to audience for an entertaining walk through the history of the laser. Professor Majid Ebrahim-Zadeh was presented the third prize by jury member Stephen Anderson, editor in chief of Laser Focus World. Ebrahim-Zadeh’s femtosecond lasers, manufactured by a spin-off business in Spain, feature wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the infrared light. They fill an important gap of tunable femtosecond laser light in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum that plays an important role in biophotonics and spectroscopy.
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| A stroll through the history of the laser: Gábor Paál |
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| The jury members and winners |
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| | Because of the quality of the work the second prize was awarded twice: Professor Hans-Peter Berlien, head of the Department of Laser Medicine at the Elisabeth Hospital Berlin awarded Professor Karsten König for his clinical multiphoton tomography. The laser instruments developed by König’s company allow for laser-based diagnosis of skin diseases, especially the highly malignant melanoma. |
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| Professor Orazio Svelto from the Technical University of Milan honored the other winning team of the second prize, a group of employees from the two companies Coherent and Bruker: Dr. Ralph Delmdahl, Rainer Pätzel, Dr. Kai Schmidt and Dr. Alexander Usoskin. They realized a large scale pulsed laser deposition method together with the required laser radiation and optical systems for the production of second generation high-temperature superconductors. |
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| Winner of the Zukunftspreis 2010: Harvard Professor Federico Capasso |
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| | The first prize went to Australia: Professor Hans-Jürgen Quadbeck-Seeger, former Chief Scientific Officer of BASF presented Professor Thorsten Trupke, also on behalf of his co-prizewinner Dr. Robert Bardos, with the certificate and the sculpture of the Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis. They were honored for their research and commercialization of laser-based luminescence imaging on silicon. With their non-destructive and fast measuring systems they increase the productivity and quality in the production of solar cells. |
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Harvard Professor Federico Capasso was honored with the Berthold Leibinger Zukunftspreis 2010 for his inventing the quantum cascade laser. The prize was presented by Nobel Laureate Professor Theodor Hänsch. In a short lecture Capasso then took the audience on a journey into the quantum world and practical applications of the novel quantum cascade laser.
In his final remarks the founder Professor Berthold Leibinger expressed his admiration for the work of the laureates: „There is a vast number of challenges in the world of lasers. So many thoughts and intentions seeking for a solution are brought up, solutions that can and will be found. Therefore it is a pleasure for me to see that the laser world is so vivid”. | |
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| Among experts: Jury members Professor Orazio Svelto and Professor Hans-Peter Berlien |
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