Last week I was in the 7th International Conference on Spectroscopic Ellipsometry celebrated this time in Berlin. This is a very nice series of conferences celebrated every 3 years (in earlier days it was every 4 years). My first participation was in Stockholm 2007 as fresh new PhD student and, later, I also participated in all the following editions: Albany (2010), Kyoto (2013) and in Berlin (2016).
In this conference I was honored to win, together with Christoph Cobet, the Paul Drude Award. The Paul Drude Award is named in honor of Paul Karl Ludwig Drude (1867 – 1906), who invented and first applied ellipsometry. Reflecting Drude’s work related to the electron-conductivity model, emphasis is also placed on spectroscopically determining and understanding the interaction of light with matter. The Paul Drude Award is given at each International Conference of Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (ICSE) to a young scientist for exceptional contributions to the development and application of spectroscopic ellipsometry.