PhD student in physics selected for Nobel Laureate Meeting Tim Seifert is taking part in this year’s meeting in Lindau

Tim Seifert is a research assistant at the Institute of Applied Physics at Technische Universität Braunschweig and works in Prof. Uta Schlickum’s ‘Nanoscopic Systems’ research group. She had nominated him to take part in the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. From 28 June to 3 July 2026, over 70 Nobel Laureates will gather there for the 75th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, alongside more than 600 early-career researchers from around the world. Tim Seifert was nominated and has successfully completed the selection process.

Tim Seifert. Photo credits: Niclas Przibylla/TU Braunschweig

“It is a great honour for me to be able to take part in the Nobel Laureates Meeting. I am very much looking forward to gaining new insights, engaging in exciting discussions and meeting some of the outstanding researchers of our time in person,” says Tim Seifert from TU Braunschweig. He is particularly pleased that this year’s conference is interdisciplinary, as his own research also links the disciplines of physics, chemistry, biology and computer science. He is also looking forward to meeting two key figures in both the early days and the current development of artificial intelligence: Geoffrey Hinton and John M. Jumper. “I would particularly look forward to a conversation with the latter, as he too has conducted research into artificial intelligence relating to proteins and biomolecules, and I find his perspective on this field of research extremely fascinating.”

PhD research on artificial intelligence in microscopy

In his PhD research, Tim Seifert is working on improving and simplifying the analysis of data recorded using scanning tunnelling microscopes. “We are trying to determine the atomic structure of biological systems such as sugar or peptide molecules. Extracting this information from the microscopy images manually is both extremely time-consuming and, in some cases, impossible to do unambiguously. I am trying to circumvent this and automate the process using machine learning methods.” To this end, he is collaborating, for example, with the Institute of Analysis and Algebra at TU Braunschweig, the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart and the University of Oxford, says Seifert. In Lindau, he will present his research to a large and distinguished audience as part of the ‘Next Gen Science’ programme.

For 75 years, the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings have been a unique forum for exchange between Nobel laureates and early-career researchers. Every summer, more than 600 of the world’s most talented early-career researchers and more than 30 Nobel laureates are invited to Lindau on the German side of Lake Constance to spend a week full of inspiration and scientific encounters. In 2025, Moritz Wolff, a PhD student at the Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at TU Braunschweig, was a guest at the Lindau meeting.

About the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings

Since 1951, the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings have been promoting exchange between scientists of different generations, cultures and disciplines. Each year, the focus alternates between one of the three Nobel Prize disciplines in the natural sciences. Every five years, an interdisciplinary meeting brings together the three natural sciences: medicine, chemistry and physics. In addition, a meeting on economic sciences takes place every three years. The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings are organised and hosted by two institutions: a Board of Trustees and a Foundation. Many of the events are open to the public.