Summer in the lab
The summer students come from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Jordan, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Turkey © arö/HZB
22 students from all over the world are working at HZB for eight weeks
The summer programme of HZB has a good reputation among students, and every year HZB receives a lot more applications than it can fund. Now, 22 young people have come from 15 different countries to start their research project in a HZB team. They will present their results at the end of September.
The students, who come from South America, Australia, Russia, Egypt, Poland and Austria, have settled in the rooms where they will be living and completed all the formalities. Now they are looking forward to doing research. For some, it will be their first step into “doing” science, others have already worked within a research team. But they all can count on the experienced HZB scientists to guide them well during this eight-week project of their own.
“Many HZB researchers have volunteered to supervise a summer student this year, ,” says Gabriele Lampert, who is coordinating the summer programme. “I know that the supervisors invest a lot of their time and I am really quite happy we can offer such a variety of interesting topics.” It is worth it, in the long run. It happens regularly that students return to HZB, either as PhDs or as users.
Asked for their reasons, the students offer several: they prefer spending their summer in the lab, instead of at the beach, working on cool renewable energies or learning a rewarding new method. And as for the beach, there is still Wannsee.
More information
- New department at HZB: ‘AI and Biomolecular Structures’Since 1 July 2025, Dr. Andrea Thorn has been setting up the new AI and Biomolecular Structures department at HZB. A biophysicist with many years of experience in AI-based tools for structural biology, she is looking forward to collaborating closely with the macromolecular crystallography team at the MX beamlines of BESSY II.
- New Helmholtz Young Investigator Group at HZB on perovskite solar cellsSilvia Mariotti starts building up the new Helmholtz Young Investigator Group ‘Perovskite-based multi-junction solar cells’. The perovskite expert, who was previously based at Okinawa University in Japan, aims to advance the development of multi-junction solar cells made from different perovskite layers.
- Excellent work-life balance continuesOn 17 June 2025, the certificates for the ‘berufundfamilie’ audit were awarded in Berlin. HZB received an award with distinction for its long-standing efforts to promote a work environment that supports work-life balance. The audit is regarded as a seal of quality for the systematic design of family- and life-phase-conscious HR policies.