People

Philipp Preiss

Principal investigator

Philipp obtained his PhD from Harvard University for work in the group of Markus Greiner. From 2016 to 2021, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Selim Jochim at Heidelberg University. He joined MPQ in September 2021.

Philipp leads the Atomic Quantum Matter group and is the project leader of FermiQP.

philipp.preiss@mpq.mpg.de

Alessandro Muzi Falconi

Postdoctoral researcher

Alessandro did his undergraduate and Masters studies at the University of Milan. For his Master thesis, he moved to Florence to work on spin-dependent optical potentials and fermionic superfluids in the group of Giacomo Roati. He then did his PhD in the group of Francesco Scazza in Trieste, where he worked on setting up a new ytterbium tweezers experiment.

Alessandro joined the group in May 2026.

Naman Jain

Graduate student

Naman did his undergraduate work at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology. For his Masters, he worked at the Cryogenic Storage Ring at MPIK, Heidelberg, studying the quantum dynamics of cold diatomic molecular ions. Later, he worked on a space-based rubidium atomic frequency standard at the Indian Space Research Organisation.

Naman joined the group in October 2021.

Jin Zhang

Graduate student

Jin did his Master’s at the University of Wisconsin Madison, working with Mark Saffman on a dual-species grating MOT and toward a neutral atom quantum network.

Jin joined the group in October 2022.

Marcus Culemann

Graduate student

Marcus received his BSc from Ruhr University Bochum and a Master of Science in Physics degree at LMU. He joined our group in May 2023 as a Masters student and completed his thesis in June 2024 before continuing as a PhD student in the group.

Francesco Testi

Graduate student

Francesco completed his BSc and MSc in physics at LMU Munich. He completed his Masters thesis on UV single-atom addressing in the FermiQP team at MPQ before joining our group in December 2025.

Alumni

Cady Feng

Research assistant

Cady worked in the group as a research intern from June 2022 to August 2022 as part of the Princeton University Summer Work Program.

Jan Wozniak

Research assistant

Jan joined the group as a research assistant from April 2022 to July 2022 while pursuing the QST Master at LMU.

Soumyadeep Sarkar

Research assistant

Soumya is in the QST Master program and worked with us as a research assistant from August to December 2022.

Arne Geipel

Bachelor student

Arne carried out the research for his Bachelor thesis in physics at LMU between October 2022 and January 2023 in our group. He built a spatially incoherent light source for high-quality DMD potentials.

Daniel Dux

Masters student

Daniel worked in the group as a research assistant and performed the research for his Master’s thesis from August 2022 to December 2023.

Jonas Kruip

Masters student

Jonas performed the thesis work for his Master of Science in Physics degree from ETH Zurich in our group between September 2023 and March 2024.

Xinyi Huang

Masters student

Xinyi obtained a Master of Science in Physics degree at LMU and completed his Masters thesis in our group in August 2024. Prior to that, Xinyi was a student at Peking University and worked in Prof. Xuzong Chen’s lab. Xinyi is now a graduate student in the LiRb team at MPQ.

Kirill Khoruzhii

Masters student

Kirill earned his bachelor’s degree from MIPT, where he assembled a Zeeman slower and designed a 2D MOT. He completed the Master’s in Quantum Science and Technology at TUM and LMU and joined our group in January 2024 to work on single atom imaging and deterministic loading of a tweezer array.

Pragya Sharma

Masters student

Pragya got her Master’s in Advanced Optical Technologies from Friedrich Alexander University, Erlangen. She joined the group in April 2024 as an external Masters student. Her thesis work focused on utilizing spatial light modulators for manipulating ultracold atoms in a tweezer array.

Jun Ong

Masters student

Jun obtained a Master of Science degree from LMU Munich. He joined the lab as a research assistant in July 2024 and completed his Masters thesis on matterwave magnification of lattice quantum gases.