Laserlab-Europe mourns the loss of Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Sandner

passed away unexpectedly on 5 December, at the age of 66 years

Wolfgang Sandner led the establishment of Laserlab-Europe in 2003, after first successfully bringing together, a few years earlier, the major European laser research institutions in the EC network LASERNET. Sandner coordinated Laserlab-Europe continuously from its establishment until 2012. During this time and under his leadership, the consortium grew significantly, geographically as well as scientifically, and accommodated, in particular, partners in the new member states as the EU expanded. He was all the time fully committed to promote the advancement of laser physics and the collaboration of scientists on a European scale.

Wolfgang Sandner studied physics at the University of Freiburg. He received his PhD in 1979 in atomic physics and soon turned to laser physics. After professorships at the universities of Würzburg, Freiburg and Knoxville (Tennessee), he became director of the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy (MBI) in 1993 as one of three directors and was appointed Professor of Physics at the Technical University of Berlin.

Wolfgang Sandner was called into many national and international organizations of science and research policy, particularly at the European level. He was advisor of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and a member of scientific advisory boards of many research institutes. Wolfgang Sandner was "Fellow of the American Physical Society" (1994) and president of the German Physical Society from 2010 to 2012.

Since 2013 Wolfgang Sandner was Director General of the ELI Delivery Consortium International Association managing the establishment of the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) as a joint European effort with three research institutions in the Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary.