Bella Lake has accepted the call to professorship at TU Berlin

The joint appointment procedure of HZB and Technische Universität Berlin is concluded: Bella Lake, head of the department “Quantum Phenomena in New Materials” has recently accepted the call to a W2 professorship. The call follows from the junior professorship she had obtained together with the head of the Helmholtz Young Investigator Group in August 2006 at TU Berlin. With her team of six scientists now, the British scientist is conducting highly successful research on quantum magnetism and high-temperature superconductors.

Her department is studying the mutual interactions between atoms and ions that can be observed on an atomic scale inside a material. Their behaviour often proves highly unusual and unexpected. Of special interest are phenomena of quantum mechanical origin. Many such exotic behaviours have been discovered in the field of quantum magnetism and superconductivity. Bella Lake and her department predominantly use neutron scattering as the choice of experimental method for studying such materials. The department “Quantum Phenomena in New Materials” hosts the x-ray and crystal growth laboratories at HZB and operates the E5 and E10 diffractometers at the BER II neutron source.

Bella Lake studied physics at Oxford University. After completing her PhD in 1997 in Oxford, she became a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto (Canada), at the Danish Riso DTU National Laboratory and at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Tennessee, USA). She next received a advanced research Fellowship at Oxford University and an assistant professorship at Iowa State University. In 2005, she came to HZB, where she soon became the head of the newly created Helmholtz Young Investigator Group.