Excellent students who have a bachelor’s degree in Physics have the opportunity to complete a so-called Excellence Track in addition to the JGU Master of Science in Physics.

The aim of the Excellence Track is to equip students with the necessary tools to embark on a successful research path and become strong candidates for a doctorate. To this end, it enables high-achieving, research-oriented students to further develop their scientific knowledge as well as complementary and transferable skills within a structured program.

For further information, please contact the coordinators of the Mainz Physics Academy (xtrack@uni-mainz.de).

The application is expected to begin in spring 2026.

The Excellence Track in three words

The Excellence Track explained by our professors

Janek Both

Research interests: High energy physics, Quantum field theory, Data analysis, Collider phenomenology.

Darius Fenner

Research interests: Atomic clocks, metrology, thorium nuclear transition.

Shumit Mitra

Research interests: Experimental astroparticle physics and cosmology, detector design for exotic BSM matter, WIMPs, Dark Photons, and ALPs.

Danaheb Navarro Durán

Research interests: Hadronic physics and the quark structure of the pion, such as the study of PDF and DA in a low energy scale. I’m also interested in flavour physics and quark physics at higher energy scale.

Judit Rodriguez

Research interests: Particle Physics, the Standard Model, Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics, Cosmology, Quantum Gravity.

Siddhanth Shishodia

Research interests: Amorphous Solid Ice, Lasers, and Soft matter physics.

Lorin Armbruster

Research interests: Beyond the Standard Model Phenomenology, Higgs Physics, Higher-dimensional Field Theory

Now doctoral student at Dr. Felix Yu’s group

Aayush Arya

Research interests: Nucleosynthesis, Precision spectroscopy of superheavy elements

Now doctoral student at the Niels Bohr Institute

Cristhian Calderon Cordova

Research interests: Theoretical Particle Physics, Effective Field Theory, Axion-Like Particles

Lukas Cavar

Research interests: Nanoscale microscopy, Topological effects in matter, Philosophical foundations of Physics

Now doctoral student at Prof. Angela Wittmann’s group

Kaustav Dutta

Research interests: Experimental Particle Physics, Neutrino Astronomy, Machine Learning

Now doctoral student at Prof. Sebastian Böser’s group

Maria Fernandez Lozano

Research interests: QFT, cosmology, string theory, flavour physics
Now doctoral student at Prof. Julia Harz’s group

Edward Finkelstein

Research interests: Experimental Particle Physics, Machine Learning, and high-performance scientific computing

Now PhD student at the Machine Learning and Physical Simulation group in Aarhus university

Christopher Gerlach

Research interests: Theoretical High Energy Physics: Cosmology and BSM

Now doctoral student at Prof. Pedro Schwaller’s group

Kitzia Hernandez Curiel

Research interests: Experimental Nuclear and Hadron Physics, Simulation and Data Analysis, Structure and Reactions of Strong Interacting Matter.

Now doctoral student at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in the group of cryosensors working on beta spectrometry with magnetic microcalorimeters.

Panagiotis Kalamidas

Research interests: Theoretical High Energy Physics
Now doctoral student at Prof. Marc Vanderhaeghen’s group

Kilian Leutner

Research interests: Condensed-matter physics, Spintronics, Skyrmionics, Computational Science, Machine Learning

Now doctoral student at Prof. Mathias Kläui’s group

Immo Reis

Research interests: Nuclear Physics, Nuclear Structure, Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions.

Now doctoral student at Prof. Sonia Bacca’s group

Alena Romanova

Research interests: Quantum Information Theory, Quantum Communication and Computing, Quantum Optics

Now doctoral student at the University of Innsbruck, group of Quantum communication and quantum networks

Josua Scholze

Research interests: Flavour physics, B meson phenomenology
Now doctoral student at Prof. Matthias Neubert’s group

Aakash Warke

Research interests: Experimental Quantum Optics, Quantum Communication using Continuous Variables, Nonlinear generation of quantum entanglement

Starting in October 2025 as a doctoral student in Prof. Dr. Alex Lvovsky group at the University of Oxford, focusing on optical neural networks, supported by a fully funded Clarendon Scholarship.

Nikhil Vijayan

Research interests: Spintronics, Orbitronics, and nanoscale imaging of solid state materials

Now doctoral student in Prof. Mathias Kläui’s group in collaboration with Infineon Technologies in Villach, Austria

Jingyan Xu

Research interests: hyperpolarization techniques for enhanced nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)

Now doctoral student at Dr. Danila Barskiy’s research group (HIM, MAM group)