Three questions for physicist Nomi Sorgenfrei

What’s the most exciting part of your job?

What I find most exciting about my work is actually the variety. Whether it’s the different requests from users to carry out an experiment – which can require creative solutions within the tight timeframe of a week of non-stop operation – or the diverse countries of origin of our beamline users. Furthermore, in my work as a scientist, I thrive on keeping experiments running and coordinating the various aspects such as laser timing, spectroscopy, data acquisition, and analysis, thereby enabling users and us to conduct exciting experiments in time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy. My daily tasks range from hands-on work, such as opening vacuum chambers, to programming, detector maintenance, and laser alignment.

If money and time were no object, what would your next project be?

If time and money were no object, I would like to work more on the latest phase-transition systems with targeted excitation via the pump laser. This work would be linked to a large-scale automation strategy at the beamline to ensure these experiments could be carried out efficiently. However, making that happen would require not only money but also a great deal of time – which is unfortunately something that we beamline supervisors, with our wide range of tasks, hardly have.

If you could choose anyone, who would you like to have dinner with and what would you talk about?

I would love to have dinner with Jamie Clayton, as she is a wonderful actress and her performance in the TV series “Sense8” gave me a lot of strength to follow my own path and stand on my own two feet. Exactly these overlaps between my life and her role, and how much her role has shaped me, would then be the topic of conversation – though of course you can’t predict in advance how such an evening will unfold.