Florian Grüner is a full professor at the University of Hamburg, Germany, where he is head of the university’s accelerator physics group. He is one of the pioneers of “table-top Free-Electron Lasers,” which aim at providing brilliant x-ray pulses with an ultracompact setup. This reduction in size is made possible when using plasma wakefield acceleration. On the application side of such accelerators, he is pursuing new ways of medical imaging based upon compact brilliant x-ray sources. Before his appointment to Hamburg he was a professor at the University of Munich, Germany, where he started cross-disciplinary work between physics and medical research.
