“We are very pleased to have Prof. Susanne Mertens as the new Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, says Hon.Prof. Dr. Christoph H. Keitel, Managing Director at the MPIK. "With her excellent research on cutting-edge topics in neutrino physics and the search for dark matter, she will complement and expand the science at the institute in an outstanding way," he explains.
Susanne Mertens is working in the field of experimental astroparticle physics and deals with some of the most fundamental questions in physics, such as the mass and properties of neutrinos, the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe and the nature of dark matter. Her research focuses on both data analysis and the development of new detector technologies for large-scale research projects to detect these fundamental building blocks of our universe. Prof. Mertens is involved in many of the world's leading research collaborations, often in leading positions as well, for example as co-spokesperson of the world-leading experiment KATRIN for measuring the neutrino mass, as PI of the TRISTAN project, a planned extension of KATRIN aimed at the detection of sterile neutrino detection or as PI of the ComPol project, a satellite mission to measure the X-ray polarization of the X-ray binary star system Cygnus X-1.
"At the MPIK, I can draw on decades of expertise in the field of detector development in high-energy physics, which is an invaluable advantage for my research," explains Mertens. "I am therefore very excited to continue my research at the MPIK and be able to advance it with the experience available here."
There will be close collaborations with the four other research departments at the MPIK. For example, the expertise in precision spectroscopy and mass determinations of the Blaum, Keitel and Pfeifer departments can help in the search for neutrino mass or the development of new measurement methods to detect sterile neutrinos - a candidate for dark matter. Susanne Mertens can draw on an existing collaboration with the Hinton and Lindner departments in the LEGEND project, an experiment dedicated to the detection of neutrinoless double beta decay. If this process, which has so far only been predicted theoretically, is found, it would prove that neutrinos are their own antiparticles. This could make an important contribution to solving the fundamental problem of the matter-antimatter asymmetry within our universe.
"Especially in the field of dark matter physics, world-leading research has been carried out at the MPIK in recent years, and I am looking forward to expanding my own research areas, for example by adding expertise in the field of WIMP searches with the XENON experiment and developing new technologies," explains Mertens.
Prof. Mertens is also particularly interested in the training of young scientists. Since 2018, more than 40 Bachelor's and Master's theses and six doctoral theses have been completed under her supervision at the Technical University of Munich. She has also been awarded the "Golden Chalk", TUM's teaching prize, several times for the best lecture in the Master's degree programs in physics.
Susanne Mertens completed her doctorate at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. From 2012 to 2016, she worked as a postdoc at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the USA. Since 2016, Prof. Mertens has headed an independent research group at the Max-Planck-Institut für Physik in Munich and was simultaneously employed as a tenure-track professor at the Technical University of Munich. In 2019, she was awarded an ERC Starting Grant and was appointed W3 University Professor at TUM in May 2022. She has already started her position as Director at the MPIK on a part-time basis and will take up this position full-time on March 1, 2025, succeeding Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Manfred Lindner on a full-time basis.
We wish her every success in her research and look forward to many groundbreaking new results in the field of astroparticle physics!
