Jürgen Mlynek

Jürgen Mlynek studied physics in Hannover and at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. After his PhD he worked as a Postdoc at IBM Research in San Jose, CA. He went on to be a professor at the ETH Zürich, the University of Constance, and Humboldt University in Berlin. His main fields of research are experimental quantum optics, atomic physics and surface physics. For his research, Mlynek was awarded the prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. Mlynek served as Vice-President of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and later as President of Humboldt University. From 2005- 2015, he was President of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres: the largest research organization in Germany. Mlynek is now a professor emeritus of Humboldt University and, as of 2023, the chairman of the Falling Walls Foundation.