Professor Michael Scherer

Michael Scherer studied physics in Heidelberg and Grenoble. In 2010, he earned his PhD at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at RWTH Aachen University and Heidelberg University, where he habilitated in 2015. As part of a scholarship from the German Research Foundation, he spent several months as a visiting researcher at Simon Fraser University in Canada. He then returned to Heidelberg University as head of a junior research group and associate professor and moved to the University of Cologne in 2017, where he conducted research as a principal investigator in the Collaborative Research Centre “Control and dynamics of quantum materials”. Since January 2022, he has held the Heisenberg Professorship for Theoretical Physics, specifically Solid State Physics of Correlated Systems, at Ruhr University Bochum, funded by the German Research Foundation.

In his works as a researcher, Michael Scherer focuses on predicting the properties of a material based on its atomic structure. In this context, he is also looking for new exotic materials whose properties arise from strong correlations between particles. Such strong correlations ensure that the collective of particles has characteristics that can’t be described by looking at the particles individually. This explains magnetism and superconductivity, for example.