Life Time Achievement Award for Roland Müller
Sharing knowledge is a pleasure for Roland Müller. Here he explains to his granddaughter how BESSY II works. © Privat
Accelerator and control systems expert Roland Müller received the ICALEPCS Lifetime Achievement Award. In the more than thirty years of his career at BESSY, the physicist has advanced many projects on control systems at accelerators and has been particularly committed to the international exchange of knowledge.
At this year’s "International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems" (ICALEPCS) in Shanghai, Roland Müller (HZB) and Andy Götz (ESRF) were jointly honored for their lifetime achievements. The ICALEPCS Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes individuals who have both made significant contributions to their field of expertise and influenced the international practice of control systems development through vision and leadership. This honor is awarded only irregularly, most recently in 2019, and is therefore a special distinction.
Over the past thirty years, Roland Müller and Andy Götz have not only led many important projects in the field of control systems to success at their own research facilities, but have also advanced the exchange in the professional community for control and operation of large physics experiments, i.e. telescopes, fusion research facilities, detectors, and especially accelerators. Thus, through great dedication and organizational skills, they have helped to build ICALEPCS into the landmark conference for control systems at large-scale research facilities.
In his acceptance speech, Müller addressed current demands on research that move him and Andy Götz, in particular the responsibility of science towards society. In consequence acquisition and storage of scientific data must be done according to FAIR principles. Data need to be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Repurposable. “Only sharing acquired data allows to look for results, nobody thought about at the moment the experiment was performed. The goal is a truly sustainable exploitation. It will add new scientific values. The rapid progress in fighting the Corona virus gave a glimpse into what can be achieved with a large pool of FAIR data. I am curious to see this evolve.”
Roland Müller has worked at the Berlin electron storage rings BESSY and MLS in the field of control systems since receiving his doctorate in 1988 and has held leading positions in machine operation. He retired in 2019, but continues to contribute his expertise: he is currently working on a digitization concept for BESSY III.
- BESSY II: High-resolution insights into individual biomolecules and catalystsVery small biological samples and even individual biomolecules can now be examined under near-physiological conditions with high confidence at the BESSY II infrared beamline with a newly validated and improved technique: The nanoscale infrared spectroscopy (s-SNOM) with ultra-thin silicon-based membranes. An international team demonstrated after an initial proof of concept, that high-resolution (a few tens of nanometres) nano-IR measurements reliably match expected far-field IR spectra in an aqueous environment. This methodological advance provides a solid foundation for studying biomaterials or observing catalytic processes in a liquid environment.
- New method shows how molecular switches are influenced by their neighborsResearchers at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Helmholtz Centre Berlin (HZB) have, for the first time, been able to directly observe how the environment surrounding a molecular switch influences its electronic structure. Molecular switches are molecules that can be switched between two states by external influences such as changes in temperature—similar to a switch with the positions »On« and »Off«. Such molecules are being investigated as potential building blocks for future data storage devices or sensor materials. Using magnetic-field-dependent terahertz spectroscopy, the researchers have now, for the first time, been able to distinguish whether neighbouring molecules in a material are in the same or different states. The results have been published in the journal »Angewandte Chemie International Edition«.
- SEAlab accelerator project completed: Achievements and outlookThe SEAlab accelerator project successfully completed its final measurement campaign in summer 2026. The facility is now being dismantled, with many components set to be reused. The two accelerator physicists, Axel Neumann and Thorsten Kamps, explain what the project has achieved and provide an outlook for the future.