International scientific panel

Harald Brune

Member of the International Scientific council of Physics

Harald Brune is Full Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). He studied Physics at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and made his PhD in 1992 in Physical Chemistry with Gerhard Ertl and Jürgen Behm at the Fritz-Haber Institute of the Max-Planck Society in Berlin. He has joined the group of Klaus Kern as Post Doctoral Fellow at EPFL, where he was nominated Lecturer in 1996, Associate Professor in 1999, and Full Professor in 2003. He is Fellow of the American and European Physical Society, Hans-Fischer Senior Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study at Technical University of Munich, has been President of the Natural and Engineering Science Division of the Swiss National Science Foundation and now heads the Institute of Physics at EPFL. His research focuses on the novel physical and chemical properties of nanostructures at single crystal surfaces and on a few monolayer thin graphene, boron-nitride, and oxide films. The nanostructures are either created by self-assembly from deposited atoms, or in the gas phase, where they are size selected and soft-landed onto the substrate of interest. Scanning tunneling microscopy is combined with spatially integrating techniques assessing magnetic, catalytic, and electronic properties. This way an atomic scale structure and property relationship is established enabling a fundamental understanding and ultimately engineering of functionality. The most recent discovery are single atom magnets, i.e., systems where a single atom exhibits stable magnetization. These systems present the smallest possible magnetic storage unit are candidates for future magnetic quantum bits. He has taught freshmen classes in Physics to mechanical and micro electrical engineering students (9 years), classes on Surface- and Nanoscience to Physics Master students (5 years), lectures on Experimental Methods in Physics to Master students in Physics, Materials Science (5 years), Nanoscience to PhD students (5 years), as well as Solid State Physics on the level of Ashcroft-Mermin to 3rd year students in Physics (11 years).