???aural:Bildanfang???Dr. Marjana Ležaić heads a Helmholtz Young Investigators Group in nanoferronics at the Forschungszentrum Jülich. © Forschungszentrum Jülich/Ralf-Uwe Limbach???aural:Bildende???

Dr. Marjana Ležaić is from Serbia. She graduated in physics at the University of Belgrade, finished her post-graduate studies in Athens, Greece, and obtained her PhD degree from RWTH Aachen University, Germany. She worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the USA and now heads a Helmholtz Young Investigators Group at the Forschungszentrum (FZ) Jülich. Her research field is nanoferronics.

You studied physics and then specialised in the field of computational nanoferronics.
What exactly does this refer to? What are the areas of application?

Nanoferronics deals with electronic transport through the junctions of ferroic materials. These are materials that posses at least one ferroic order, such as ferromagnetism or ferroelectricity. The ferroic orders sometimes come together in a single material — an especially desirable material property that is extremely interesting for applications. The areas of application are, for example, different sensors or multifunctional memory devices with low energy consumption, high speed and high information density. In a nutshell, smaller and faster electronics.

You have also done research in Greece and the USA. What made you decide to continue your career in Germany?

I first came to Germany as a PhD student in 2002 after my studies in Belgrade and the post-graduate studies in Athens. I conducted the research that led to my PhD degree in 2005 at the Institute for Solid State Research (IFF), under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Stefan Blügel. At the time when I was about to finish my post-graduate studies in Greece, he was looking for a PhD student. My supervisor in Athens, Prof. Dr. Nikolaos Stefanou, who once used to be a post-doc in Jülich, too, recommended that I consider this possibility. He told me that everything was well organised in Germany so that one could fully devote one’s time to research, and that there were many funding options, excellent facilities and, importantly, a great amount of knowledge. Following his advice, I applied for the position and moved to Germany. He was right: The FZ Jülich (and Germany) lived up to my expectations. I was lucky to work in the field of spintronics at its epicentre, in the IFF,
where Peter Grünberg made the discovery of the Giant Magneto-resistance that initiated the whole research field that I am now a part of, and earned him and Albert Fert the Nobel Prize in physics in 2007.

What do you regard as the biggest challenges foreign researchers face when they come to Germany?

The first obvious challenge is of course the language and setting up a life in a foreign country. The language problem can be solved with the German language courses that are usually organised for the newcomers at the institutes or the universities where they work. I also found that people here were very helpful and would easily switch to English if they saw I didn’t understand. It is funny. What often happens is that if you ask Germans if they speak English, they reply “A little”, and then they start talking to you in excellent, fluent English. Communication is easy to establish, so, for example, finding an apartment and all the problems a newcomer could have are relatively easily coped with. From that point on, I guess the “fitting in” part depends on the individual.

You are heading the Helmholtz Young Investigators Group Computational Nanoferronics Laboratory at the FZ Jülich. What are the working conditions and career prospects like for international young scientists?

We are a group of five people, two PhD students, two post-docs and myself. We work at the Institute for Quantum Theory of Materials at the IFF. There are eight Young Investigators Groups in the IFF, with four of them led by people coming from abroad, and they are all rather international. For example, in my group there are people from Ukraine, Germany and Sweden. In terms of career prospects, I think there is no difference between the German and international scientists in Germany. In the specific case of the Helmholtz programme from which we are funded, the position of the group leader is a tenure-track, so in principle, if the groups are evaluated positively, one can stay permanently in the FZ Jülich as a researcher. For most people, however, this is only the starting point, since they usually become professors at a university and continue their career there.

I find the environment at the IFF very friendly and stimulating. We are integrated in an institute with people with expertise in different areas of solid-state work. This means that if I need to discuss a specific subject or run into a problem, I can very often simply walk down the corridor and knock on the door of the appropriate person to help me solve it. Since we use computer simulations for the study of materials which are typically rather complex, the supercomputing facilities of the FZ Jülich are a big advantage. There we can use thousands of processors for the simulations. This enables us to tackle the problems in physics of nanoferronic junctions that would otherwise be impossible to solve. I should also mention the central library of the FZ Jülich, where one can find a wealth of literature, both scientific books and journals. It also offers electronic access to all the important research publications. Everything is at reach and well organised. All you need is curiosity and the will to succeed.

Thank you very much for this interview.

More information about Helmholtz Young Investigators Groups: www.helmholtz.de/en

???aural:Bildanfang???From left to right: Dr. Ivetta Slipukhina, Dr. Marjana Ležaić, Adam Jakobsson, Martin Schlipf and Dr. Konstantin Rushchanskii are junior researchers at the Forschungszentrum Jülich.  Marjana Ležaić???aural:Bildende???