2020 Award

    The Coblentz Society will present the 2020 Coblentz Award to Dr. Benjamin P. Fingerhut of the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy (MBI) in Berlin, Germany.  The date and place of the award presentation has not yet been determined due to the COVID-19 situation.

     Benjamin Fingerhut studied chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich, Germany. In 2011 he completed his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physical Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Regina de Vivie-Riedle. He joined the group of Prof. Shaul Mukamel at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) as a postdoctoral fellow in September 2011. In 2014 he moved to the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy (MBI), Berlin, Germany, where he is currently heading the Biomolecular Dynamics research group.

     Dr. Fingerhut's research focuses on the real-time investigation of ultrafast structural dynamics of molecular and biomolecular systems. The group aims at novel computational simulation protocols suited to investigate nonadiabatic relaxation phenomena in vibrational and electronic excited states. In close collaboration with experimentalists, he applies vibrational probes for the quantification of noncovalent interactions of hydrated biomolecules in aqueous environments. The group developed a numerically efficient path integral method for the description of open quantum systems. 

     Dr. Fingerhut's contributions to science have been recognized by many awards and grants, including the Coblentz Award, an ERC Starting Grant (2018), the Robin Hochstrasser Young Investigator Award (2016), the Emmy Noether Early Career Grant of the German Research Foundation (DFG) (2014), and the Feodor-Lynen-Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation (2012).