Karin Schütze and Raimund Schütze, cofounders of P.A.L.M. Microlaser Technologies (a company of Carl Zeiss MicroImaging; Bernried, Germany), have been awarded first prize in the Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis competition for their submission, “Laser Microbeam and Laser Catapult for Single Cell Capture.” They were chosen from among eight nominees and 32 original proposals. Second prize went to Ian Walmsley, University of Oxford, England, for “Methods for Complete Measurement of Ultra-Short Pulses”; third prize went to Michael Mei and Ronald Holzwarth, Menlo Systems (Martinsried, Germany), for commercialization of the optical frequency comb technique.
P.A.L.M. was founded in 1993 to commercialize noncontact microdissection and micromanipulation systems using LMPC (laser microdissection and pressure catapulting) technology. The Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis award, established in 2000 by the Berthold Leibinger Stiftung, a private nonprofit foundation, is awarded every two years for innovative research and development in the field of applied laser physics. The 2006 awards will be presented at a ceremony in Ditzingen, Germany, on July 3. In addition, the “Berthold Leibinger Zukunftspreis” will be awarded to H. Jeffrey Kimble from the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA) for his work with cavity quantum electrodynamics. See www.leibinger-stiftung.de.