Ultra-low Power Sensor Systems – the Fuel for Artificial Intelligence

On October 12th, a group of 13 CRC members traveled to Hamburg for this year's CRC field trip. The train, subway and bus rides from Kiel to the DESY campus provided a welcome opportunity to reconnect with colleagues from other CRC projects face-to-face after mostly seeing each other on screens for the last months. The day at DESY started with an overview talk by Dr. Oliver Seeck covering the physics of snychrotron radiation, the history and constructional characteristics of the DESY facility and selected current research projects highlighting the wide range of research fields working at DESY. The impressive examples included a high resolution 3D imaging technique providing new insights on how the coronavirus damages lung tissue, and on a lighter note, how synchrotron radiation was used to investigate the solidification mechanism of cooking egg whites. Furthermore, it was very interesting to learn about the process of applying for beam time at DESY.

After lunch on the sunny terrace of the FLASH building, Dr. Seeck gave a guided tour through the FLASH and PETRA III facilities. The group got to see a number of different beamlines with their specialized experimental setups. At beamline P08, Svenja Hövelmann explained the setup maintained by the group of Bridget Murphy, which has also been used for CRC research. To finish off the field trip, the group visited the DESY exhibition which features models of the technical equipment at DESY such as bending magnets, undulators and wigglers. A few brave members of the CRC experienced the effect of a Fresnel zone plate on sound waves.

A big thank you to Dr. Oliver Seeck for the very interesting and informative day at DESY!

Mona Stölting, CRC 1261