On 13 January the 2025 first session of “Yanqi Lake Lecture Series” opened in the Urban Living Room of Huairou Science City.Under the theme “Can science contribute to meeting the greatest challenges of our time?” Nobel Physics laureate 2023 Prof. Ferenc Krausz gave the keynote. About 500 participants from research institutes and tech firms in Huairou, the Science City Administrative Committee, Huairou District Bureau of Economy and Digitalization, Huairou District Commission of Science and Technology, and students discussed how innovation can shape the future.
Starlight over Yanqi: lecture and dialogue with the Nobel laureate
On that day, Prof. Krausz first toured major facilities such as the Synergetic Extreme Condition User Facility and the Beijing Laser Acceleration Innovation Center to see the latest frontier research and cutting-edge achievements.
Then, in his lecture, he outlined advances in ultrafast lasers, especially attosecond, their ultra-sensitive detection advantages and how they can help screen major non-communicable diseases.
After the lecture, Krausz engaged in deep discussions with attendees on how they can tackle epochal challenges through innovation, creating a vibrant atmosphere.
Boosting the Science City’s integrated development
“Yanqi Lake Lecture Series” is a regular international exchange platform initiated by Huairou Science City. It will invite key players across the innovation chain, draw top scientists, professors, entrepreneurs and technologists to Huairou, pool global wisdom and foster an open ecosystem, turning the city into a new hub where education, science, talent and industry forge ahead together.
The event demonstrated the vitality of Huairou’s international innovation ecology, broadened participants’ horizons, and strengthened cross-disciplinary coordination. All parties pledged to seize this successful inaugural session to act in concert, cultivate new-quality productive forces through innovation, and keep delivering on the three themes of “science, scientists and Science City”.
About Ferenc Krausz
Physicist, born Hungary 1962; Wolf Prize 2022, Nobel Prize in Physics 2023; member of the Austrian, European, Hungarian, Russian, European Academy of Sciences & Arts, and German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
His research spans ultrashort-pulse laser technology, attosecond and strong-field physics, nonlinear, atomic, plasma and X-ray optics, octave-spanning infrared-visible-ultraviolet synthesis, electromagnetic-field sampling from terahertz to petahertz, ultra-sensitive light-field detection and laser molecular-fingerprint analysis for health monitoring and disease detection.
He and his team were the first to generate and measure attosecond light pulses and use them to track electron motion in atoms and molecules in real time. The laser systems and components they developed can be applied to quantum computers, superconductors and medicine, e.g. early detection and treatment of malignant tumors.