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Prof. Dr. Burkard Hillebrands has been awarded two academic honors by leading Chinese universities. Nanjing University appointed him Distinguished Guest Professor, while Hubei University in Wuhan conferred upon him the title of Honorary Professor.

These distinctions recognize Prof. Hillebrands’ longstanding scientific contributions to magnetism, spin dynamics, magnonics, and spintronics, as well as his international engagement in building academic collaborations. While these titles are not research prizes in the narrow sense, they represent significant institutional academic honors and reflect the high international visibility of his work and of research in magnetism and magnonics at RPTU.

The honors underline the importance of scientific exchange between RPTU and partner institutions in China. They provide further opportunities to strengthen collaboration in fundamental and applied research on magnetic materials, spin-wave phenomena, and future information technologies.

We warmly congratulate Prof. Dr. Burkard Hillebrands on receiving the 2026 Dominique Givord Award of the European Magnetism Association (EMA). The Dominique Givord Award recognizes established leaders in magnetism for their scientific excellence and long-standing contributions to advancing magnetism across Europe. Prof. Hillebrands receives the 2026 award for his pioneering contributions to spin dynamics and magnonics, as well as for his dedicated leadership and influential role within the European magnetism community. His scientific achievements include major contributions to Brillouin light scattering spectroscopy and the realization of magnon-based logic devices, helping to establish magnonics as a key field of contemporary magnetism. Prof. Hillebrands served as Full Professor at TU Kaiserslautern and later RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau from 1995 to 2024, where he now serves as a Senior Professor. He is also a founding member of EMA and served as EMA President from 2019 to 2022. The award will be formally presented at JEMS 2027 in Prague, where Prof. Hillebrands will give a plenary lecture.

More information:
EMA announcement 

A recent collaborative work carried out by researchers from the University of Vienna, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, Oakland University, INNOVENT e.V., Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, and RPTU University Kaiserslautern–Landau has been published in Science Advances: R. O. Serha et al., Sci. Adv. 12, eaee2344 (2026).
The study reports a breakthrough in quantum magnonics by demonstrating magnon lifetimes exceeding 18 μs in ultrapure yttrium iron garnet (YIG) spheres at millikelvin temperatures. This represents an improvement of nearly two orders of magnitude compared to previously known values. As a result, magnons emerge as long-lived quantum excitations, bringing their coherence into the range of superconducting qubits. These findings significantly advance the prospects of using magnons as information carriers in hybrid quantum systems. In particular, such long lifetimes open pathways toward magnon-mediated coupling of distant qubits, quantum memories, and low-loss on-chip interconnects. The work highlights the importance of material purity and low-temperature operation for pushing magnon coherence to unprecedented limits.

Prof. Burkard Hillebrands hat gemeinsam mit der Coachin Martina Grünewald-Ernst einen Podcast zum Thema Mentoring & Coaching gemacht: "Exzellenz beginnt im Kopf – Wissenschaft machen, Karriere gestalten“. Der Podcast (in deutscher Sprache) richtet sich an Postdocs und Wissenschaftler im Bewerbungsprozess für eine Professur, sowie an frisch berufene Professoren. In dem Podcast erläutern sie ihre Arbeit, siehe https://optimas.uni-kl.de/veranstaltungen/coaching-mentoring