Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging

The Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging (CUI) is a research facility established in the context of the Universities Excellence Initiative by the German Federal and State Governments.

Scientific teams cooperating in the cluster come from the Universität Hamburg, the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), the European XFEL GmbH (XFEL), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), and the newly founded Max-Planck-Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD).

The fundamental research at CUI aims to analyze chemical and physical processes in the field of photon and nano science: About 150 involved scientists investigate the chronological sequence of movements related to reactions and processes at the interface of quantum physics, molecular biology and nanochemistry.

In collaboration with the Joachim Herz Sitftung, CUI awarded the Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics, honoring outstanding contributions in the fields of atoms, molecules and quantum optics, as well as condensed matter with a prize-money of €40,000 .

It is awarded by the Joachim Herz Stiftung in partnership with the Wolfgang Pauli Centre (WPC) of Universität Hamburg, DESY, and CUI, and honors outstanding contributions to Physics in general.