Max Planck Research Award

Excellent scientists and scholars of all nationalities who are expected to continue producing outstanding academic achievements in international collaboration - not least with the assistance of this award - are eligible to be nominated for the Max Planck Research Award.
On an annually-alternating basis, the call for nominations addresses areas within the natural and engineering sciences, the life sciences, and the social sciences and humanities.

The Max Planck Research Award 2014 will be conferred in the area of natural and engineering sciences in the subject "Quantum Nano Science".

113 years after the foundation of quantum theory by Max Planck, researchers succeed in controlling materials with ever higher precision to realize exotic quantum states. Thus nano structured materials and devices arise, that by exploiting the most bizarre features of quantum mechanics – take discretisation, superposition, entanglement and many body systems as examples - are designed for special purposes. Such phenomena form the focus of the relatively young experimental field of Quantum Nano Science that has emerged at the interfaces of nano science, quantum optics, photonics, materials technology and quantum information.

The deadline for nominations is 31 January 2014.

Every year, the Humboldt Foundation and the Max Planck Society grant two research awards to one researcher working abroad and one researcher working in Germany.

The Presidents/Vice Chancellors of universities and the heads of research institutions in Germany are eligible to make nominations (c.f. list of eligible nominators). Direct applications are not accepted. As a rule, each award is endowed with 750,000 EUR and may be used over a period of three to a maximum of five years to fund research chosen by the award winner.