Professor Omar Azzaroni from Argentina has received the Georg Forster Research Award, granted by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, for his research in the field of nanosciences. As award winner, he will work in close cooperation with the Materials Research Department of GSI.

The research at FAIR and the ongoing research activities in the run up to its establishment were the focus of a visit by Professor Wolf-Dieter Lukas, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Together with further senior staff from the BMBF, he heard all about the outlook for the future at the FAIR and GSI campus.

Dr. Uwe Niedermayer has received the Young Scientist Award for Accelerator Physics of the German Physical Society (DPG). The award honors his scientific achievements in the development of simulation programs that are used, for example, for the design and calculation of future accelerators at GSI/FAIR and CERN as well as his contributions to the realization of a laser driven accelerator on a chip.

For his outstanding scientific achievements in the field of exotic nuclei the physicist Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Hans Geissel receives the Polish Alexander von Humboldt Award in Physics. Prof. Geissel is senior scientist in the FRS/Super-FRS research department at GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung and the Facility for Antiproton an Ion Research (FAIR GmbH) in Darmstadt as well as Professor at Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (JLU).

High-precision measurements of the mass of the deuteron, the nucleus of heavy hydrogen, provide new insights into the reliability of fundamental quantities in atomic and nuclear physics. This is reported in the journal "Nature" by a collaboration led by the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics Heidelberg, Germany, and partners from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research Darmstadt and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz, Germany.

An important success has been achieved in the Electroplating Department of the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung: The copper plating of a cavity with two meter in diameter was successfully realized. This is also of great importance for the future accelerator center FAIR. In order to achieve the FAIR parameters, the existing linear accelerator UNILAC, which will serve as a pre-accelerator in the future, has to be partially upgraded with new cavities.

Two major topics are the focus of the 18th issue of our magazine "target" of GSI and FAIR. On the one hand, the corona pandemic has impacted all areas of our lives. Therefore, we have attached a special supplement to this issue, which is dedicated to the operations and research at GSI and FAIR during this time and our efforts to fight the pandemic. On the other hand, last year we celebrated our 50th anniversary with many activities and events.

Marco Durante, head of the GSI Biophysics Research Department and professor at the TU Darmstadt, has been awarded the prestigious Failla Award 2020 by the Radiation Research Society (RRS). Professor Durante has been invited to give a lecture on his scientific career at the virtual annual RRS meeting in October this year. The award has been announced at the end of June.

Does life exist only on earth? How did the universe we live in come into being? And what holds matter together at its core? Researchers at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal are getting to the bottom of these questions using various large-scale experiments. The astroparticle physicists receive funding for their research from the Federal Ministry of Science and Research, the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy, represented by the project management organizations DLR and PT-DESY (Deutsches…