Bettina Heim is the Optical AIT engineer at Max-Planck-Inst Physik des Lichts, Germany. She studied Physics at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), Germany and at Lund University, Sweden until 2009. During her dissertation, she worked as a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) in Erlangen with Prof. Dr. Gerd Leuchs on the implementation and investigation of various quantum communication protocols, in particular for atmospheric transmission. She received her Ph.D. in physics from FAU in 2015, having also successfully completed the graduate research and education program offered by SAOT (School of Advanced Optical Technologies, FAU) within the framework of the German initiative of excellence. In 2015 she was also awarded the SAOT student award.

Heim has been a visiting researcher in Prof. Thomas Jennewein’s group at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) in Waterloo, Canada in 2010 and 2011. She was the Scientific Coordinator at MPL. She also coordinated MPL’s activities in the International Year of Light 2015.

Heim has been an active member of the Sociedty for many years. She served as president of the hbar OMEGA Student Chapter Erlangen, she (co-)organized a variety of activities such as field trips, conferences and seminars.