The current reporting period again features numerous interesting projects with often surprising results in the Faculty of Physics. Five students from Prof. Gerhard Wurm’s research group celebrated an extraordinary success when their experiment was accepted for the International Space Station (ISS) and they were able to witness the rocket launch of the experiment in Cape Canaveral. They were even invited to Bellevue Palace for an appointment with the President of Germany, and ultimately they were able to celebrate the results of their successful experiment exploring planet formation – all in all undoubtedly one of the highlights of the Physics research report.

There was also a great media response to the findings of a Master’s thesis in our Energy Science degree course. Master’s student Lennart Korsten discovered in his thesis, “Technical and ecological effects of alternative fuels on the development of the future regional transport system”, that besides diesel cars in Rhine cities such as Düsseldorf, inland waterway transport also contributes significantly to pollution. This example shows that the Energy Science degree course is achieving its goal of dealing with topics of great social relevance.

This research report of the Faculty of Physics can only outline research results in the following pages, but it nevertheless gives an idea of the enormous range of topics covered. Our Collaborative Research Centre CRC 1242 “Non-Equilibrium Dynamics of Condensed Matter in the Time Domain” contributes to the large number of high-ranking publications in the reporting period. This is of particular importance with the evaluation for renewal due next year.

An extension has already been granted to the “Ruhr Explores Solvation” cluster of excellence (RESOLV for short): from 2019 it will be funded for a further seven years within the framework of the federal and state excellence strategy. In future, the Faculty of Physics will be involved in this cluster through Prof. Uwe Bovensiepen and a new professorship established especially for the purpose.