June 26, 2013: 1^st Germany-China Young Scientist Symposium on “Ultrafast Light Sources and Spectroscopy Applications”

The 1^st Germany-China Young Scientist Symposium on “Ultrafast Light Sources and Spectroscopy Applications” was successfully held in Hamburg, Germany, June 24-26, 2013. The symposium was funded by the Sino-German Science Center under the “Young Scientist Forum” program, and was hosted by the Center for Free Electron Laser Science (CFEL) and Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY). The symposium was jointly organized by Dr. Guoqing Chang (CFEL) and Prof. Dong Sun (International Center for Quantum Materials of Peking University). 
Professor Franz Kӓrtner, Germany's keynote speaker, delivered a tutorial talk to open the symposium after welcoming remarks from Dr. Guoqing Chang and Prof. Dong Sun. Thirty-five young experts and scholars in relevant research fields from China, Germany, and US attended the symposium and presented their recent research results. Many local graduate students, researchers, and some ultrafast laser related industry leaders attended the symposium as well. During the second day of the symposium, the attendees visited the advanced light source facilities at DESY: PETRA III and FLASH. Local researchers also invited attendees to visit their individual research labs at CFEL and University of Hamburg. 
The symposium  discussed scientific topics in both ultrafast light sources (such as laser frequency comb, attosecond generation, coherent pulse synthesis, plasmon laser, high harmonic generation) and their spectroscopy applications (such as terahertz spectroscopy, sum frequency generation spectroscopy, coherent diffraction imaging, two dimensional Fourier transform spectroscopy and coherent control). All the symposium attendees were actively involved giving talks, providing comments, and exchanging ideas. We believe that the symposium has planted a seed for future collaboration among the attendees.