The TOPTICA Senior and Junior BEC Awards 2025 honor outstanding research in Experimental and/or Theoretical Physics of Quantum Degenerate Atomic Gases. The senior prize recognizes a specific work that is firmly established and has significantly advanced the field of quantum degenerate gases. The junior prize recognizes outstanding work by a young scientist for research early in his or her academic career. The TOPTICA BEC Award for Lifetime Achievements 2025 recognizes longstanding important contributions to the field. Each prize consists of a 2500 Euro cash award, and a certificate citing the contributions of the recipients. The prizes are awarded under the auspices of the biannual BEC conference and are sponsored by TOPTICA Photonics AG.
Rules & Eligibility
Nominations may be made by any member of the international scientific community. Senior, junior, and lifetime prizes shall ordinarily be awarded to one person but may be shared when all recipients have contributed to the same accomplishment. Only exceptionally the award may be split among different accomplishments. Junior awards are given to scientists who have received their last academic degree less than about 10 years ago, for work that they have done in any role (e.g., student, postdoc, group leader, other). The senior awards are given for scientists with more than about 10 years since completing their PhD degree, for their independent work. The specific work for which they are awarded should be relatively recent, for instance from the last 10-15 years. The lifetime award is given for a scientist with a long career whose cumulative impact is remarkable to the field. In general, recipients of the Nobel Prize and previous BEC Awards are not eligible for the TOPTICA BEC Awards 2025, unless the accomplishments cited in the nomination represent new or different work.
Nomination & Selection Process
Nominations should be sent by email to klaus.sengstock@uni-hamburg.de no later than June 30, 2025. The nomination must include, as a single pdf attachment, a letter by the nominator(s) describing the accomplishments to be recognized and a citation. A CV and a list of relevant publications may be included but are not required. Self-nominations are not accepted, and nominees should not be involved in or informed of the nomination process. Nor should the members of the selection committee be nominated. The nominations from the previous two rounds are automatically valid and considered, thus nomination is not needed in these cases although can be amended if necessary.
2025 Committee members
Klaus Sengstock (Chair of the TOPTICA BEC Awards 2025), Monika Aidelsburger, Eugene Demler, Alexander Fetter, Wolfgang Ketterle, Tilman Pfau, Wilhelm Zwerger. The Scientific Committee of the BEC conference elected the committee members.
Past recipients:
BEC Lifetime Award 2023: Alexander Fetter and Wilhelm Zwerger
BEC Senior Award 2023: Tilman Pfau
BEC Junior Award 2023: Monika Aidelsburger
BEC Lifetime Award 2021: Tin-Lun (Jason) Ho
BEC Senior Award 2021: Tilman Esslinger and Rudolf Grimm
BEC Junior Award 2021: Martin Zwierlein
BEC Senior Award 2019: Lev Pitaevskii and Sandro Stringari
BEC Junior Award 2019: Francesca Ferlaino
BEC Senior Award 2017: Jean Dalibard
BEC Junior Award 2017: Cheng Chin
BEC Senior Award 2015: Tom Greytak, Harald Hess, Daniel Kleppner
BEC Junior Award 2015: Shina Tan
BEC Senior Award 2013: Immanuel Bloch
BEC Junior Award 2013: Markus Greiner
BEC Senior Award 2011: Gora Shlyapnikov
BEC Junior Award 2011: Ian Spielman
