Dr. Tim M. Schwarz receives Borchers Badge from RWTH Aachen University

University honours outstanding PhD thesis

The RWTH Aachen University awarded Dr. Tim M. Schwarz, project group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials (MPI-SusMat), with the Borchers Badge. This distinction recognizes exceptional doctoral theses and is reserved for graduates who passed their PhD with the highest grade, summa cum laude. In his PhD, Schwarz advanced atom probe tomography (APT), a microscopy technique that analyses materials at the atomic scale to uncover structure-property relationships.

“I’m honoured to receive the Borchers Badge for my PhD work and grateful to my supervisors Professor Baptiste Gault and Professor Dierk Raabe for their support and believe in me”, says Schwarz. During his doctoral research, he extended APT’s capabilities from metals to frozen liquids, enabling new insights into the liquid–solid interfaces during corrosion. He now applies these methods to study implant materials, iron corrosion, and catalytic materials. His contributions have been recognised repeatedly: in 2025, with the Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society; in 2024, with the Walter Benjamin Award of the German Research Foundation; and earlier, with the Erwin Müller Award, the highest honour for young scientists in the field of atom probe tomography. Tim M. Schwarz is now leading the project group “Interfacial processes/reactions at the atomic scale” at MPI-SusMat.

The Borchers Badge is named after Professor Dr. Dr.-Ing. E.h. Wilhelm Borchers, a metallurgist president of RWTH Aachen University from 1904 to 1909.