16 December 2024
Professor Laurens Kuipers, better known as Kobus Kuipers, will join the Board of Directors at the beginning of March 2025, taking over as head of Scientific Division I (VS-I). The 57-year-old Dutchman will assume responsibility for the following areas:
- Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI)
- Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS)
- Jülich Centre for Neutron Science (JCNS)
- Ernst Ruska-Centre (ER-C)
- Helmholtz Nano Facility (HNF)
- Institute of Biological Information Processing (IBI)
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM)
Kuipers comes to Jülich from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), where he has been director of the Quantum Nanoscience department for eight years. He has also been a director at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience for four years. The experimental physicist obtained his doctoral degree at the University of Amsterdam before a research stay took him to the University of Cambridge, where he investigated the deposition and dynamics of mass-selected nanoclusters as part of an Oppenheimer Fellowship. Further highlights of his research career included professorships at the universities of Utrecht, Twente, and Amsterdam before he moved to Dutch research institute AMOLF, where he became head of the Center for Nanophotonics in 2006. AMOLF is a national research institute under the auspices of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and conducts basic research in physics and complex matter.
The "professor of light"
Kobus Kuipers is a pioneer in the field of nano-optics, which is concerned with the investigation and manipulation of light on the nanoscale. Kuipers caused a stir in the scientific community with his measurement of slow light. That's why he has sometimes been jokingly referred to as the "professor of light", says the Amsterdam native. His research focuses on the behaviour of light in certain materials. Depending on the material, light behaves differently; it can slow down and even stop. This interaction between material and light can be controlled. "This holds great potential for developing more powerful chips, but also for reducing the power consumption of chips," says Kuipers.
Renowned scientist
Back in 2003, Kuipers received a prestigious Vici grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for research into non-linear optics on the nanoscale. The funding is awarded to outstanding senior researchers who conduct innovative research and have also made a significant contribution to supporting early-career scientists. In 2013, he received an ERC Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. He has been a member of the Netherlands' Physical Society since 2016. In 2019, he received the Physica Prize, the highest award for physicists in the Netherlands. He has been founding chair of the Dutch Physics Council since 2020.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
In addition to scientific excellence, Kuipers brings to Jülich extensive management experience from his work on national and international management and supervisory bodies. He believes that scientific progress is the result of creative collaboration between different disciplines and domains. "The whole can be greater than the sum of its parts," he says. This is why the interdisciplinary nature of Forschungszentrum Jülich appeals to him. Kuipers sees great potential for new interdisciplinary connections within Jülich's research priority of Information - for example, between neuroscience, high-performance computing, data science, material sciences for the IT of tomorrow, quantum science, and neuromorphic computing. However, he also sees opportunities for inspiration and innovation across the different disciplines and research priorities, for example through the new possibilities that JUPITER - Europe's first exascale computer - will open up for simulations and AI applications in energy research.
In a video, Kobus Kuipers explains his research into light and its potential:
