From a distance, it looks like a UFO has landed right in the middle of the growing Adlershof technology park. Nearly round and silver, it sits amid spacious fields and lawns, the building housing the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB). BESSY II is the name of this electron storage ring, where the elemental particles of our matter are accelerated to near light speed and driven around in a circle. The process generates light across a broad spectrum of wavelengths, dubbed “synchrotron radiation.” This includes high-intensity X-rays, but also visible light as well as Terahertz radiation. At times the light is millions of times brighter than the sun.

He is a chemist, has several companies, and is active in the fight against global epidemics. Chemistry, business, or medicine – what interests Peter Seeberger the most? “All of it,” he says. After all, Seeberger, a professor of chemistry at Freie Universität and the head of the Biomolecular Systems department at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) of Colloids and Interfaces, combines the three fields.

Even scholars have luck on their side at times. Take, for example, the scholars of ancient studies who are working near the city of Nordhausen, in the central German state of Thuringia, to uncover traces of two long-past cultures. “Immigration by one group into a society with a different structure can create tension. If it is possible to identify and analyze a situation like that occurring in the distant past, that’s an unusual stroke of luck for archaeologists,” says Michael Meyer, a professor at the Institute of Prehistoric Archaeology at Freie Universität Berlin and director of the Topoi cluster of excellence.