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Fedor Jelezko and Jörg Wrachtrup are the winners of the prestigious ZEISS Research Award in 2016.

They have been honored for their outstanding work on quantum technology with optically addressable spins in diamond.

The award will be presented within the framework of the ZEISS Symposium that will take place for the first time on 23 June 2016 in the ZEISS Forum in Oberkochen. During this event international experts will conduct discussions and identify trends and requirements in the fields of optics and photonics that are being strongly influenced and changed by the increasing level digitization in the modern world. These include, for example, computational imaging, computer vision and machine learning, large data in optics, and virtual and augmented reality.

The ZEISS Research Award will be presented every two years and has been allocated prize money totaling 40,000 euros. The selected candidates should have already demonstrated outstanding achievements in the field of optics or photonics. They should still be actively conducting research, and their work should offer major potential for gaining further knowledge and enabling practical applications.

This year's high-profile jury comprises the following members:

• Jürgen Mlynek, Former President, Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres; Chairman of the Board of Trustees
• Stefan Hell, Director, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany; winner of Carl Zeiss Research Award in 2002 and winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2014
• Anne L’Huillier, Professor of Atomic Physics at Lund University, Sweden; winner of the Carl Zeiss Research Award in 2013
• Ulrich Simon, Senior Vice President, Corporate Research & Technology, Carl Zeiss AG
• Andreas Tünnermann, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering in Jena, Germany

ZEISS Research Award

Initiated and funded by Carl Zeiss AG, the ZEISS Research Award is the successor to the Carl Zeiss Research Award that honored outstanding achievements in optical research every two years from 1990 onward. It was advertised by the Ernst Abbe Fund and was allocated prize money of 25,000 euros on its most recent presentation. 20 winners received the prize in a total of 13 award ceremonies.

Many winners of Carl Zeiss Research Award went on to obtain further awards and distinctions, four of them even the Nobel Prize. 

• Ahmed H. Zewail, winner in 1992: Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1999
• Eric A. Cornell, winner in 1996: Nobel Prize for Physics in 2001
• Shuji Nakamura, winner in 2000: Nobel Prize for Physics in 2014
• Stefan Hell, winner in 2002: Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2014.

The announcement for the 2016 ZEISS Research Award was sent to a broad network of specialists and prominent personalities in science, industry and society at the end of September. They were requested to submit their proposals by 15 November.

Carl Zeiss Award for Young Researchers

Starting in 2016, independently of the ZEISS Research Award, the Ernst Abbe Fund in the Donors' Association for the Promotion of Sciences and Humanities in Germany will present a research award with a new focus: the Carl Zeiss Award for Young Researchers. This will also be presented at the ZEISS Symposium. The winners in 2016 are:

• Robert Brückner, Institute for Applied Photo Physics (IAPP), Technical University of Dresden, Germany
• Georg Heinze, Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), Barcelona, Spain
• Robert Keil, Institute for Experimental Physics, University of Innsbruck, Austria

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