15.06.2026 SFB 1319 ELCH Workshop hosted

A summer workshop as part of SFB 1319 ELCH (Extreme Light for sensing and driving molecular CHirality) was hosted by the Berger research group in Marburg on 15th and 16th of June, 2026.

The workshop opened with a scientific talk by Dr. Fabian Wolf from the Physikalisch Technische Bundesanstalt on ‘Quantum logic control of complex ionic species’ which focused on precision spectroscopy with an outlook on applications to chiral molecular ions. The subsequent meeting of the general member and early career researcher assemblies was followed by a poster session that featured contributions on most recent activities related to light-driven analysis and control of molecular chirality.

On the second day the workshop concluded with a 3-hour hands-on session, which focused on parity-violating energy differences (PVED) in tetraatomic molecules. The interactive session attempted to combine a simple Machine Learning approach with numerical computations of PVED with the goal of attaining largest possible absolute values of PVED irrespective of the actual stability of the molecular structures that were used to train the model. Participants were encouraged to think beyond the restraints of chemical bonding frameworks to arrange a system of the four atoms to get larger absolute values and yet be judicious about the input structures they used to train their models.

The semi-annual workshop, hosted at the different institutes that are part of the SFB 1319 ELCH, namely Universität Kassel, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Freie Universität Berlin and Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron Hamburg, offers an opportunity for the associated members to come together for fruitful discussions and exchange of ideas on ongoing activities and get hands-on experience with diverse laboratory or simulation methods that fall under the umbrella of molecular chirality.