Invited Plenary Talks
(Time zone: Europe/Berlin, CEST/UTC+2)
Tuesday, 08. September 2026
09:00-10:30 Award Ceremony and Schwarzschild Lecture (MW-1801 / virtual plenum)
| 09:00 | Opening |
| 09:15 | Karl Schwarzschild Lecture - Marta Volonteri: |
| Massive black holes: their origins and evolution |
| 10:00 | Ludwig Biermann Award Talk - Caroline Gieser: |
| Following the flow: From molecular clouds to protostars |
11:00-12:15 Plenary Talks (Awardees) (MW-1801 / virtual plenum)
| 11:00 | Astrophysical Software Award Talk - Cornelis P. Dullemond: |
| RADMC-3D: Connecting models to observations |
| 11:30 | Maximilian Häberle: |
| oMEGACat and the intermediate-mass black hole in Omega Centauri |
| 12:00 | Awards: |
| Bruno H. Bürgel Prize: Florian Freistetter Hans-Ludwig-Neumann Prize: Klaus Hünig Jugend-forscht Award: Alexander Leukert and Leon Heinisch |
Wednesday, 09. September 2026
09:00-10:30 Plenary Talks (MW-1801 / virtual plenum)
| 09:00 | Esra Bulbul: |
| Cosmology and Baryons Across Scales: Probing Halo Mass Function to Cosmic Filaments with eROSITA |
| 09:30 | Andreas Sander: |
| A changing perspective on massive stars: Insights from detailed atmosphere modelling |
| 10:00 | Amelie Saintonge: |
| The mass-dependent baryon cycle |
11:00-12:15 Plenary Talks (MW-1801 / virtual plenum)
| 11:00 | Reinhard Genzel: |
| Massive Black Holes: Experimental Evidence & Cosmic Evolution |
| 11:45 | Sebastian Wolf: |
| The hot exozodi phenomenon |
Thursday, 10. September 2026
09:00-10:30 Plenary Talks (MW-1801 / virtual plenum)
| 09:00 | Jean-Michel Desert: |
| New Worlds, New Horizons: Emerging Perspectives from Transiting Exoplanet Atmospheres |
| 09:30 | Anna de Graaff: |
| Little Red Dots: a remarkable new class of growing black holes |
| 10:00 | Ralf Klessen: |
| The First Stars |
11:00-12:00 Plenary Talks (MW-1801 / virtual plenum)
| 11:00 | Hendrik Hildebrandt: |
| Entering the golden age of cosmic shear measurements |
| 11:30 | Brandt Gaches: |
| Towards next-generation cosmic-ray astrochemistry models |
Friday, 11. September 2026
09:00-10:30 Plenary Talks (MW-1801 / virtual plenum)
| 09:00 | Jiamin Hou: |
| Higher-order Functions in Large-Scale Structure |
| 09:30 | Caroline Heneka: |
| AI in Astronomy |
| 10:00 | Giulia Despali: |
| Astrophysical tests of dark matter: observations and simulations |
11:00-12:00 Plenary Talks (MW-1801 / virtual plenum)
| 11:00 | Stephan Rosswog: |
| Neutron star mergers as laboratories for extreme physics |
| 11:30 | Michela Mapelli: |
| Black hole mergers: insights from hundreds of gravitational wave observations |