Two EPFL physicists join 2019 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting

The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings take place each year to “foster the exchange among scientists of different generations, cultures, and disciplines.” Established in 1951, around 30-40 Nobel Laureates convene in Lindau (Germany) on the shores of Lake Constance to meet the next generation of leading scientists, giving selected young researchers a unique chance to present their research in poster sessions and Master classes, and receive feedback from the Nobel laureates and other participants.

The focus of the meetings alternates between physiology and medicine, physics and chemistry; this year, the 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting focused on dark matter and cosmology, laser physics and gravitational waves. The meeting took place between 30 June and 5 July and was attended by 600 undergraduates, PhD students, and post-doc researchers from across the world, interacting with 39 Nobel Laureates, among them Donna Strickland and Gérard Mourou who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018.

Two physicists from EPFL had the privilege of participating at this year’s Meeing: Edoardo Martino from the Laboratory of Physics of Complex Matter, and Vivien Bonvin from the Laboratory of Astrophysics. Martino explores the electrical and optical properties of new materials for electronic and energy conversion applications, and he is also part of the Light Fermion Spectroscopy group at the University of Fribourg.

Bonvin, who works on measuring the expansion rate of the Universe using gravitational lensing was chosen to present his research during the class of astrophysicist Brian P. Schmidt, who won the 2011 Nobel in Physics. Bonvin was also asked by the Lindau organizers to interview astrophysicist Adam Riess who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011 with Saul Perlmutter and Brian P. Schmidt for showing that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.