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Giant

Events

GIANT Transversal Skills Workshops and GIANT Lecture Series and Trainings build bridges between partners at the University of Würzburg and IISER in Thiruvananthapuram through a hybrid format. Unlike typical online events, hybrid teaching and learning scenarios aim to connect physical and virtual spaces in such a way that both online participants and those on-site are equally actively involved in the events.

Workshops

The GIANT project at the University of Würzburg invites higher education teacher and young scientist to explore hybrid interactive teaching in the format of an advent calendar, starting on December 1st, 2025. Participants entering this seasonal journey get access to audiovisual content centering around hybrid interactive teaching day by day, until December 24th. 

Registration for this highly innovative teacher training format is via self-enrollment on OpenWueCampus: https://openwuecampus.uni-wuerzburg.de/moodle

On Thursday, December 4th, we step out of the lab and into the world of entrepreneurship, knowledge and technology transfer.

Departure: 12:15 PM, Parking Space at Building Z6 

14:00 Welcome & Tour,  Dr. Sebastian Engel@Zollhof Nuremberg 

Confirmed speaker:

Prof. Lukas Worschech, GIANT JMU Project Coordinator

Christoph Heynen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, S-OUTREACH – Outreach Support

Matthias Trost, CEO, FAU Start-up Amperial Technologies GmbH 

Dr. Mikhail Antonkin, Bavarian Research Alliance (BayFOR)

18:00 End 

~ Evening at the Nuremberg Christkindlesmarkt ~

Retour to Wuerzburg: 21:30

Further details will be successively added. 

Please make sure to RSVP! 

Contact: rebekka.steinmann@uni-wuerzburg.de 

Wednesday, 03.12.2025, 13:00 -17:30, the Center for Nanosystems Chemistry hosts a Scientific Workshop at the Center for Nanosystems Chemistry where GIANT guest students, professores and co-workers have the chance to meet, discuss their experience and present the research project they have been working on at JMU. 

A Christmassy coffee break will hopefully provide a nice opportunity to mingle and exchange before the first GIANT interns at JMU return to India, end of December. 

For questions concerning the Scientific Workshop, please get in touch with Dr. Yvonne Wagenhäuser, member of Prof. Frank Würthners team at the Institute of Organic Chemistry. 

GIANT-Transversal Skills Workshops are held in a particularly designed and equipped hybrid classroom. We like to thank our partners, the JMU chair for adult education and the DigitTaKS team for their generous support in delivering this series of full hybrid workshops.

Date: 17.10.2025 

Duration: 10:00 - 15:00, participants are warmly welcome to join us onsite for coffee and a chat from 9:30 on and stay for networking afterwards 

Format: hybrid / interactive 

Contents:

  • General introduction to intercultural communication / aims of the workshop
  • Warm up Exercise:  typical challenges
  • Short presentation: Indian culture / German culture
  • Group discussion on case studies / scenarios 
Trainer
Anna Scarabel,  M.A., member of JMU’s India Competence Centre

Lectures and Trainings

GIANT Lectures and Trainings from the participating disciplines are technically supported by the organizing departments. These also employ hybrid scenarios with varying degrees of interaction among participants. GIANT Lectures and Trainings are generally closed events intended for those funded through the project. Information on whether external guests may attend can be found in the respective event descriptions.

The research area Functional Nanosystems – Materials Chemistry (FN-MC) invites to the live
broadcast of a three-part lecture series presented by Prof. Dr. Frank Würthner at IISER-TVM, 
hosted at the Center for Nanosystems Chemistry.

 

Lecture 1: 27/10/2025 Functional Nanosystems 1: Supramolecular Engineering of Light Energy Converting Nanosystems

Lecture 2: 28/10/2025 Functional Nanosystems 2: Supramolecular Engineering of Photoluminescent Nanosystems

Lecture 3: 29/10/2025 Functional Nanosystems 3: Supramolecular Engineering of Nanographene pi- and Anion Receptors

Indian Time 6:30 PM (German Time 2:00 PM) to Indian Time 8:30 PM (German Time 4:00 PM)

Interested guests may contact the organizer via the registration form below. 

Prof. Bert Hecht, chair of the Nano-Optics & Biophotonics group, Experimental Physics 5, University of Würzburg delivers a three-part lecture series at the School of Physics, IISER-TVM from 7.11.2025 - 11.11.2025. 

High-end plasmonic nanostructures: Forces, strong coupling, nonlinearities

Friday, 7. November 2025, 3:30 PM, IISER-TVM, School of Physics Seminar Hall

Abstract: The precision afforded by He-ion beam milling on monocrystalline gold and silver flakes presents an opportunity to tailor local fields at an unprecedented level of 1 nm. This method enables the fabrication of intricate structural details, which can be used to create nanoresonators and antennas with unique properties. We leverage these capabilities to create devices that exhibit local symmetry breaking, ultrasmall mode volumes, and precise chiral scattering. The lecture will introduce some basics of plasmonics and fabrication, and then progress towards more applied topics. 

References

  1. Meier, J., Zurak, L., Locatelli, A., Feichtner, T., Kullock, R. and Hecht, B. “Second harmonic generation from plasmonic hotspots by controlled local symmetry breaking,” Adv. Optical Mater.,11, 2300731 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1002/adom.202300731.
  2. Groß, H., Hamm, J. M., Tufarelli, T., Hess, O. & Hecht, B. “Near-field strong coupling of single quantum dots,” Science Advances 4 (3), eaar4906 (2018). https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aar4906
  3. Wu, X., Ehehalt, R., Razinskas, G. Feichtner, T., Qin, J. and Hecht, B. “Light-driven microdrones,“ Nat. Nanotechnol. 17, 477–484 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-022-01099-z

Advanced topics in Plasmonics: Topological edge states and subwavelength OLED pixels 

Monday, 9. November 2025, 6:00 PM, IISER-TVM School of Physics Seminar Hall 

Abstract: In his second lecture, Bert Hecht will report on the latest results that make use of plasmonic mode coupling and modification of the local density of states in plasmonic nanostructures. The first experiment realizes a plasmonic Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model in which collective but localized edge modes appear in the middle of a band gap [1]. We visualize the subwavelength structure of these modes by photo-electron emission microscopy. The second experiment reports on organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) that have subwavelength dimensions while still possessing individual electrical connections. Screens with such small pixels may be needed in miniaturized projectors for augmented/virtual reality applications. We will discuss how the scaling of conventional OLEDs breaks down upon miniaturization and why new, plasmonic nanoantenna-based concepts are expected to play an important role in subwavelength OLED pixels [2].   

References

  1. Plasmonic Su-Schrieffer-Heeger chains with strong coupling amplitudes, Benedikt Schurr, Matthias Hensen, Luisa Brenneis, Philipp Kessler, Jin Qin, Victor Lisinetskii, Ronny Thomale, Tobias Brixner, Bert Hecht. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.02603. To appear in Science Advances (2025)
  2. Individually addressable nanoscale OLEDs, Cheng Zhang, Björn Ewald, Leo Siebigs, Luca Steinbrecher, Maximilian Rödel, Thomas Fleischmann, Monika Emmerling, Jens Pflaum, and Bert Hecht, Science Advances 11(43), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adz8579 (2025)

Physics Department Colloquium - Light-driven microdrones: From fundamentals to application 

Tuesday, 11. November 2025, 4:00 PM, PSB Seminar Hall, 

Abstract: We recently have introduced light-driven microdrones – objects that can be controlled by unfocused laser light in aqueous environments in all six degrees of freedom in 2D [1]. In the colloquium we will introduce the concept of light-driven nanomotors and how they can be used to build microdrones. We will then proceed to discuss potential applications. An important step is to supplement the microdrones with a resonant gold cross antenna which acts as a plasmonic tweezer element [2]. This addresses the critical challenge of nanometer-precise transport and delivery of cargo, particularly nano-sized particles, in liquid media. We demonstrate intricate interactive manipulation sequences, including trapping, transport, release, and re-trapping of nanodiamond particles, underscoring the transformative potential of our approach for applications ranging from transport of nanoscale cargo and drug delivery to localized quantum sensing.

References

  1. Light-driven microdrones, Xiaofei Wu, Raphael Ehehalt, Gary Razinskas, Thorsten Feichtner, Jin Qin & Bert Hecht, Nature Nanotechnology 17, 477-484 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-022-01099-z
  2. Light-driven plasmonic microrobot for nanoparticle manipulation, Jin Qin, Xiaofei Wu, Anke Krueger & Bert Hecht, Nat Commun 16, 2570 (2025), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-57871-x