Prize Winner 2014

Dr. Markus Ries (left) and Dr. Alex Manuel Frano Pereira (right) together with Prof. Mathias Richter from the Society of Friends of Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin during bestowal of the 2014 Ernst-Eckhard-Koch-Prize on December 4, 2014 in Berlin-Adlershof.

The Association of Friends of Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin awarded on 4 December 2014 the 24th Ernst Eckhard Koch Prize for outstanding doctoral theses in the field of research with synchrotron radiation. Two junior scientists were recognised this year. Dr. Alex Manuel Frano Pereira, who has since become a postdoc at the University of California Berkeley, was honoured for his doctoral dissertation entitled “Ordering Phenomena in Transition Metal-Oxide Heterostructures” at Technische Universität Berlin that dealt with spin and charge density waves in oxides. The results are very topical for the field and are being discussed as exemplary and state-of-the-art in the literature. Dr. Frano himself has been very productive in these discussions and has published in Nature, Science and Physical Review Letters. The works have been cited more than 450 times.

Accelerator physicist Dr. Markus Ries received the award for his work on “Nonlinear Momentum Compaction and Coherent Synchrotron Radiation at the Metrology Light Source” at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The awards committee judged that he made a key contribution to understanding and further development of the operation of storage rings with short variable electron bunches. His work is being incorporated into HZB’s BESSY-VSR project for which Dr. Ries is continuing his research as a postdoc.