Your Friendly Physicist and other Nerds: Stories from Physics and Science

"In the end, founding our company was a no‑brainer!" If you can say this about the founding process of your company, you've probably done a few things right. With the right people. At the right place. Dr. Andreas Weis and Jennifer L.M. Rupp founded Qkera in 2023. Steffen Weinmann came in a bit later as Head of Engineering. Together with a (still) small team they develop next-generation batteries....

In der neuen Episode ist André Baumeister von FramScience zu Gast: Geograph, Geologe und jemand, der Reisen mit Wissenschaft und echte Lernerfahrungen kombiniert. Von den Alpen über Norwegen bis in die Arktis sprechen wir darüber, wie aus Beobachten ein tieferes Verständnis für Landschaften, Klima und die dahinterstehende Wissenschaft wird. Ein Winter-Special mit Abenteuer-Geschichten, und eine wo...

Imagine, you rent a car, pack it with scientific equipment, a bunch of samples, and your favorite colleagues. You drive to a large-scale facility, where you set up your experiment and spend days and nights to shoot neutrons or x-rays on your samples. Sounds exciting? That's what scientists call beamtime: It's intense, exhausting, and chaotic but those sleepless nights often lead to the bre...

Physik trifft Politik: Vom Labor direkt in den Deutschen Bundestag ⚛️🥼 ➡️ 🏛️🇩🇪 Wie fühlt es sich an, wenn man Schutzbrille gegen Aktentasche tauscht? Und wenn plötzlich nicht mehr Messdaten, sondern Gesetzestexte den Arbeitsalltag bestimmen? Dr. Markus Schleuning ist Physiker und hat genau diesen Schritt gewagt. Ein halbes Jahr lang hat er im Team von Thomas Heilmann (CDU) im Deutschen Bundestag...

Let's build a university on the Moon. And you can be part of it! 🌖🎓 Lakshmi Karan is Vice Chair of the Galactic Council of LunARC and she has a mission: To democratize space exploration, so that all humans, and not just some billionaires, benefit from access to space. 💪🏽🚀 One idea to achieve this is to build a university on the Moon. But Lakshmi and LunARC aren't doing this on their own. They...

If you look at our Moon these days, would you think that it will soon be an extraterrestrial art exhibition? 🌗 🖼️ Priyanka Rajkakati, PhD is a scientist. And she is an artist. For her, that's not two sides of the same medal, but a complementary way of experiencing our world. As scientists, we often don't know what we are looking for (and where, and why, and when 😵‍💫). So, why not approaching th...

Just two nerds talking about small-angle scattering 🤓 🤝 🤓 I am fully aware that this is a super nerdy topic, but if anyone can get you excited about the magic of scattering X-rays (or neutrons) at small angles, it's Brian Richard Pauw from Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung ! 🙌 Tune in to find out why scattering is so powerful, what you can do with it, and where the hidden pitfal...

“I started the company and 28 days later the world was ruined!" ☠️🌍 Florian Döring has quite some stories to tell: 🏭 Why and how he founded XRnanotech ? 😷 What the pandemic meant for the company? 🦸🏼‍♂️ Which superpowers he wants to have as a CEO and how he makes the invisible visible? The full story is now available on your favorite podcast app! #yourfriendlyphysicist #podcast #science #resea...

Prof. Saša Zelenika is Vice Rector for Strategic Projects at the University of Rijeka in Croatia. Together, we dive into how universities can foster real-world innovation and prepare students for dynamic careers by enhancing communication and collaboration between academia and industry. Professor Zelenika shares his experiences and vision for how the University of Rijeka is shaping the future thro...

False Vacuum Decay! This term describes when a meta-stable quantum field (=False Vacuum) becomes a stable quantum field (=True Vacuum). This might happen at some time to the (maybe) meta-stable Higgs Field, and the consequences would be quite drastic: the annihilation of the entire universe ☠️😱  Kurzgesagt explained this concept already a couple of years ago, and recently, we turned their YouTube...

Aakash has a mission: Cure allergies, forever! For this cause, he founded Wyndly, a raising US start-up. In this episode, we discuss the science behind Wyndly, what experiences he made along the way founding his company, and what differences we see between the US and the European start-up scene. For any questions to Aakash or me, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or X .

The very first nuclear reactors were not built by humans but by nature, roughly 2 billion years ago! In this short episode, you will find out how these reactors were discovered, how they worked, and why they are still relevant for current technologies. This story is a great reminder that nature is full of surprises and has been conducting its own experiments long before we came along. 🌎🌊⚛️ Discl...

CO2 is everywhere! In the atmosphere as well as in everybody's mind. So what, if we simply take CO2 and transform it into something useful? Wouldn't that solve a lot of problems? Exactly this is the idea of the British start-up ViridiCO2. I had the pleasure to sit down with their Co-founder and Senior development chemist Panashe Mhembere to talk about how this works! Tune in into the amazi...

Can scientists found a start-up? I had the pleasure to discuss this question with Sarah Jessl, PhD , current director of the ChemSPACE of TUM Venture Labs  at Technische Universität München in this episode. We talked a lot about the huge ecosystem of the TUM Venture lab and how it supports students turning a scientific idea into entrepreneurial impact. Sarah explained why it is a good idea to thin...

Christian Kuttner did his PhD at the University of Bayreuth and continued as a postdoc and Marie Curie Fellow at the IPF Dresden and the University of San Sebastian, before he joined the Springer Nature Group and became an Editor at Nature Communications.  In this episode, he shares with us the reasons why he switched from 'content creation to content curation', and what the actual role of academi...

This week, on Tuesday, 27th of February, the Mapheus-14 rocket launched in Kiruna, Sweden and brought around 400 kg into space to do science in zero-gravity. On board were 14 experiments on materials research, manufacturing, and biomedicine to find out how the brain regenerates and how microgravity affects the central nervous system. Congratulations to a successful launch and rocket campaign! 🚀🙌...

Valérie Andre studied Physics at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, before she joined the big chemistry company BASF in Ludwigshafen, Germany. As a Senior Manager for Scouting and Strategy at BASF, she was responsible for the relationships of BASF with universities and research institutes.  In this episode, Valerie shares some inspiring insights on how to bridge the gap between the ind...

Coral reefs are important ecosystems and biodiversity hotspots. Many species of fish, invertebrates, and other organisms depend on coral reefs for their survival. 🐠 🦑 🦀 🐚 Also, coral reefs help to stabilize the global climate: They absorb and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thereby helping to mitigate the impacts of climate change. And they act as natural barriers that help protect c...

Quantum dots! 🚀 🔬 👩‍🔬 This term was first coined by the physicist Mark Reed, and I think he did a pretty good job: with the buzzword 'quantum' it sounds super fancy, and still, no one really knows what it means. But, quantum nanodots are important: This year, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded The Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Louis E. Brus, Aleksey Yekimov, Moungi G. Bawendi,...

Matthias studied solid-state physics in Dortmund and did his PhD with a focus on optical spectroscopy of semiconductor nanostructures. Besides being a scientist, Matthias is also a great communicator. As a Physikant, he combines both, science and communication, and brings physics into the spotlight. And he thinks big! There is no fire tornado, imploding oil barrel, or thermodynamic water column th...

The world of physics is an exciting place. You find all kind of mysterious creatures in there. From wave-particle dualities in the lands of quantum mechanics, to oceans filled with neutrons or electrons, to futuristic cities powered by perovskite solar cells. And then there are the people that live this wondrous world. We call them scientists. And sometimes we call them Nerds.  This world does not...

Gilles studied physics in Heidelberg and did his master's studies on polymer batteries at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). For his PhD, he moved to Southampton to work on electrochemical processes for bottom-up electronics. After a year at the Soleil synchrotron in Paris, he is now at the neutron research reactor FRM II in Munich, where he aims to further improve batterie technology....

Academia often is a challenging, competitive, and energy-draining place. But there are plenty of tips, tricks, and advice that can change that. Since I got many questions and messages from you, about how to master the academic system, I want to do a little community service and share my personal experience with the academic system, and what things helped me the most during my PhD and now my postdo...

Gian studied physics and did a PhD in theoretical condensed matter physics afterward. His research focuses on holography, which is a mixture of quantum mechanics and general relativity. Right now, he is a postdoc at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Besides, Gian is very talented in explaining complicated things in a simple way. That makes him just perfect for this episode, which is all...