Showcase 2026

We were delighted to host 110 delegates, including 15 international attendees, for two days of talks and roundtable discussions.

Plenary talks

Thank you to our four plenary speakers for their insightful talks (pictured below; clockwise from top left):

• Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Ullrich Pfeiffer (University of Wuppertal and INTEREST, DFG Priority Programme), who provided some background on INTEREST and highlights of DFG-funded projects,
• Dr Phil Taday (TeraViewLtd.), who discussed real-world experiences in the application of terahertz waves​, including car paint metrology and non‑destructive pharmaceutical product porosity control,​
• Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Sascha Preu (TU Darmstadt and German Terahertz Center), who introduced the German Terahertz Center and some of his own work on photonic spectrum analyzers and vector network analyzers, and
• Professor Heinz-Wilhelm Hübers (German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin),who gave some insights into his work on high-resolution terahertz heterodyne spectroscopy for atmospheric research.

Roundtable discussions

Thank you to our meeting delegates for enthusiastically engaging in our roundtable discussion sessions, which were centred around our six Special Interest Groups (SIGs). The outcomes of these discussions will serve as the starting point for our roadmapping activities.

Training needs survey

During the meeting, we launched our survey to identify training needs for PGRs, ECRs and MCRs working across terahertz science and technology. The outcomes of this survey will inform our future training workshops. Please fill this in and encourage your colleagues to do the same: https://forms.office.com/e/PTgztErBBz (external link).

Poster prizes

Congratulations to the winners of our poster prizes (pictured below; L-R), which were presented by the Chair of our Advisory Board, Professor Neil Alford:

• First prize: Dr Lucy Hale (ETH Zürich) for her poster entitled ‘Multi-Mode Light Matter Coupling in Self-Hybridized Multi-Quantum Well Heterostructures’
• Runner up: Dr Mozhdeh Mohammadpour-Zehaab (Lancaster University) who presented her work on ‘Characterisation of anion exchange membranes using humidity-controlled THz-TDS’
• Runner up: Dr Rohit Chikkaraddy (University of Birmingham) for his work on ‘Terahertz Phonon Pumping through Mid-Infrared Optomechanical Amplification’

Finally, a sincere thanks to our event sponsors, QinetiQ and the Royce Institute’s Atoms to Devices Research Area, for kindly sponsoring our networking reception and poster prizes respectively .