Emad Aziz promoted to full professor

Prof. Emad Aziz has been promoted to full Professor (German W3) at the Freie Universität Berlin effective July 1, 2015. He held previously a junior professorship in the Department of Physics. Aziz heads the HZB Institute for Methods of Material Development and the JULiq Joint Lab operated concomitantly by the HZB and Freie Universität Berlin.

Emad Aziz has headed a highly productive Young Investigator Group at HZB focussed on Functional Materials in Solution since 2009; shortly after that time he was appointed Junior Professor in the Department of Physics at Freie Universität Berlin. He has been involved since 2012 with setting up the Joint Ultrafast Dynamics Laboratory in Solution and at Interfaces (JULiq) being operated concomitantly by the HZB and Freie Universität Berlin.

With his constantly expanding international team, he is developing new methods for investigating the structure and dynamics of ultrafast processes and phenomena in solutions and at interfaces. For example, he set up specialised equipment at the BESSY II synchrotron source – the LiXEdrom – to investigate liquid samples under vacuum using synchrotron light. This involves using a microjet to fire a narrow stream of sample liquid so fast through the X-ray beam that the vacuum remains intact. Meanwhile, using a number of spectroscopic and laser-based methods, e.g. high harmonic generation (HHG), his team has been able to precisely analyse electronic and chemical processes at the surfaces and interfaces of nanoparticles and molecules in solution or in an aqueous environment.

Aziz received a Starting Grant from the European Research Council in 2011 with which he expanded his research team. He has headed the Institute for Methods of Material Development at HZB since 2014. He has been able to attract internationally renowned researchers to his team, some of whom have brought their own research grants with them to the HZB. Aziz has received numerous awards for his research, including the 2011 Karl Scheel Prize of the Physikalische Gesellschaft zu Berlin (Physical Society of Berlin) and the Nernst Haber Bodenstein award of the German Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry (DBG) in 2014. The appointment to full professor enables him now to engage in teaching and research long term at Freie Universität Berlin and the HZB.