Jochen Küpper
Jochen Küpper FRSC is a German chemist and physicist, group leader at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, and Professor of Physics and Professor by courtesy of Chemistry at the University of Hamburg, Germany.
Küpper is best known for his pioneering work on the control of complex neutral molecules, including the spatial separation of structural isomers and their laser-alignment and mixed-field orientation. He develops novel techniques to control the external and internal degrees of freedom of neutral molecules and exploits these well-defined samples in experiments to image their nuclear and electronic structure and dynamics.
Education and career
Küpper went to Lise-Meitner-Gymnasium in Leverkusen, Germany. From 1991 to 1996, he studied Chemistry at Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, and University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2000, he received his doctorate in Physical Chemistry from Heinrich Heine University. In 2009, he received the habilitation in experimental physics for his work on the control of large, neutral molecules at Free University Berlin.He was Feodor-Lynen Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Society at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, from 2001 to 2002, and at the FOM-Institute for Plasma Physics "Rijnhuizen" in Nieuwegein, The Netherlands. He then became project leader in the Department of molecular physics at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin-Dahlem, Germany.
Since 2010, he is a professor of physics at University of Hamburg, and a research group leader at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science and DESY in Hamburg, and since 2015, he is also a professor by courtesy of chemistry at the University of Hamburg.
Honors and awards
Küpper has received several awards, including the prestigious Nernst Haber Bodenstein Prize of the German Bunsen-Society for Physical Chemistry in 2009, and an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2013. He was elected as fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2014. He was also awarded the following prizes throughout the years:- Kandarpa Narahari Rao Prize
- Feodor Lynen Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
- Nernst Haber Bodenstein Prize of the German Bunsen-Society for Physical Chemistry