Physicist granted funding funding in DAAD’s PRIME programme
Dr. Eileen Otte researches for 18 months at Stanford & SoN
Physicist Dr. Eileen Otte opens up new opportunities with one of the 25 coveted and highly competitive PRIME fellowships from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Behind the term "PRIME" lies, somewhat more unwieldily, the "Postdoctoral Researchers International Mobility Experience". The aim is to support postdoctoral researchers not through traditional scholarships, but through targeted promotion of international mobility. In this way, the path to foreign universities is to be made easier. For Dr. Otte, funding under the fellowship includes an 18-month position at the Center for Soft Nanoscience (SoN) at WWU with Prof. Dr. Bart Jan Ravoo combined with a 12-month stay abroad. The young scientist will spend this period abroad at Stanford University in the group of Prof. Dr. Mark L. Brongersma.
Dr. Otte's research focuses on so-called structured light fields, i.e. light that varies spatially in its different properties such as its direction of oscillation. These light fields are ubiquitous in everyday life and nature and can hold information about the environment in which they are observed. In collaboration of SoN and Stanford, Dr. Otte will combine her expertise with nano-structured, functional surfaces to develop novel imaging methods. In particular, these methods will be used to reveal the usually invisible properties of tailored, molecular nanostructures.
The selection for the DAAD's PRIME programme is not the first award for the young researcher. Earlier this year, she was accepted into the “Junges Kolleg” of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts (AWK NRW). This was preceded by a summa cum laude doctorate at WWU in 2019, along with the Rector's Award for the best dissertation in Physics at WWU and its publication in the Springer Theses series. Dr. Eileen Otte has also already been awarded the Research Award 2020 of the Industrie-Club e.V. Düsseldorf in cooperation with the NRW AWK in 2020.