In close collaboration with researchers from the University of Michigan (USA), physicists in Augsburg have succeeded for the first time in proving experimentally and theoretically that heat transport through molecules can change by up to a factor of two through the exchange of a single atom. The study was published in the highly renowned journal Nature Materials.

department of Physics (Prof. Dr. Nadine Schwierz)

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application deadline:?Mai 15^th, 2026

The University of Augsburg is delighted to announce an outstanding honour for one of its early-career researchers: Assistant Professor Dr Dominik Schmid has been awarded the 2026 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize, regarded as Germany’s most prestigious award for researchers in the early stages of their careers. This was announced by the Executive Board of the German Research Foundation (DFG) in Bonn.

In an exciting competition, the Chair of Experimental Physics V secured first place. With strong teamwork, dedication, and skillful play, the team prevailed against its competitors and claimed this year’s championship.

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On 27th October 2025, Michael Schlottke-Lakemper gave his inaugural lecture at the University of Augsburg. The (German) title of the talk was

Wissenschaftliches Rechnen im KI-Zeitalter: Zwischen Rechen- und Denkmaschine

which roughly translates to "Scientific Computing in the AI Age: From Number Crunchers to Thinking Machines".

Physicists at the University of Augsburg together with collaborators from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and Rutgers University, USA, have successfully switched an antiferromagnetic state in an insulator by voltage pulses, within just a few tens of billionths of a second. Their findings were recently published in Physical Review Letters.?

At the Chair of Resource and Chemical Engineering (Prof. Vollprecht) and the Chair of Technology Assessment (Prof. Jan Paul Lindner), a joint doctoral researcher (m/f/d) is being sought for the research project RueBe (“Dismantling of Construction and Excavation Waste Landfills for the Production of High-Quality Building Materials”).

The University of Augsburg, in collaboration with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Leiblein GmbH, and G.E.O.S. Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH, has received funding for a research project focused on the recovery of critical metals from industrial wastewater. As part of this project, a position is available at the Chair of Resource and Chemical Engineering.

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We look forward to your applications.

Physicists from the University of Augsburg have achieved an important breakthrough in their work with so-called Kitaev materials - a basis for quantum spin liquids. This insight from basic research is important for the development of future technologies. The results, which were obtained at the Chair of Experimental Physics VI, were published in the highly renowned journal Nature Communications.

?Together with Arpit Babbar and Hendrik Ranocha, we have submitted our paper "Automatic differentiation for Lax-Wendroff-type discretizations".

Vivienne Ehlert has joined the High-Performance Scientific Computing Lab on 15^th May 2025 as a PhD student.

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An international research team comprising two researchers from the University of Augsburg reported in Nature the first detection of the superconducting gap in high-pressure high-T_c hydrides. They synthesized and measured planar tunnel junctions of H₃S under pressures exceeding 1.5 mega bar and detected a record-large superconducting gap, evidencing hydride high-T_c superconductivity ??

Soil contaminated with harmful perfluorinated and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) is difficult to clean, a complete remediation is often not possible. To improve the remediation process, researchers at the University of Augsburg are trialling various cleaning methods. Their work is now being financially supported by the Bavarian Research Foundation.