During last year’s DIG-UM Annual Meeting in Aachen, we were delighted to present the DIG-UM Awards for the very first time, honoring outstanding scientific achievements in the field of digitization in ErUM sciences.

PhD Award – Dr. Chenran Xu

Dr. Chenran Xu obtained his PhD in November 2024 from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology with summa cum laude on the topic „Automatic Control of Linear Particle Accelerators with Machine Learning Methods“. He significantly advanced accelerator physics by using modern AI methods for the control of accelerators, such as deep reinforcement learning and Bayesian optimization. He also introduced important innovations for the simulation of accelerators, including differentiable simulations and surrogate models. He is not only outstanding in his scientific achievements, but he is also strongly engaged in sharing his knowledge for the benefit of the community.

PhD Award – Dr. Áron Kripkó

Dr. Aron Kripko obtained his PhD in November 2023 from University of Giessen with summa cum laude on the topic „Studying the hadron structure with PANDA and CLAS using machine learning techniques“. He not only used deep neural networks for the photon reconstruction at PANDA and the kaon identification at CLAS, but also applied a genetic algorithm, which does not rely on gradients as many other ML algorithms, for the optimization of a selection. His various contributions to simulation and reconstruction software for experiments, which benefit many scientists, are outstanding.

Early Career Award – Dr. Ramon Winterhalder

Dr. Ramon Winterhalder is a pioneer in using AI methods for particle collision event generators. Already during his PhD at Heidelberg University, he laid the basis for ML-forward simulations, neural importance sampling, and generative unfolding. These innovations are essential for being able to analyze the data that the HL-LHC at CERN will deliver. Dr. Winterhalder continued his impactful research at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and other European Universities, while keeping tight connections with the German ErUM community. His developments are available to the community in open-source software packages and constitute an outstanding advancement of digitization in ErUM sciences.

Congratulations to all awardees!

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the Award Sponsors for their generous support and for making the award ceremony so special! Thank you as well to everyone who joined us in person to celebrate the awardees during a wonderful dinner following the ceremony.