Daniel Berger: I asked myself the question of meaning
Physicist Dr. Daniel Berger earned his doctorate in theoretical chemistry and wanted to use his postdoctoral position at the Helmholtz Institute for Renewable Energy in Erlangen-Nuremberg (HI-ERN) as a springboard to a professorship. But after two and a half years, he shelved that dream and applied to Siemens. In this interview, he talks about catalysis research, changing stages of life, and his current role as Innovation Team Lead.
You worked as a postdoc at HI-ERN—a branch of Forschungszentrum Jülich. What was your research there?
Even while working on my doctoral thesis in theoretical chemistry, I knew I wanted to go into catalysis research. After completing my dissertation, I first spent a year abroad at the University of California in Los Angeles, then my path led me to the Helmholtz Institute for Renewable Energy in Erlangen. In the preliminary interview for the postdoctoral position, we defined the topic of “microfluid simulations and catalysis” – there was a collaboration with the University of Erlangen, which was a great fit. My supervising professor, Jens Harting, was working on Lattice Boltzmann simulations, which was new territory for me: We wanted to couple the catalysis, which I had previously described on an atomic basis using electron structure theory, with the transport properties of gases and liquids. We thought this approach was promising, so I worked on it for two and a half years.
Sounds like there's a “but.” Didn't it go as expected?
Well, the time wasn't as fruitful as hoped: the method was clearly too slow for industrial applications or realistic systems, which is why “fame and glory” unfortunately failed to materialize. That's the risk of research. It's fun to take such risks up to a certain age, but at some point the tide turns. So I asked myself the question: Do I want to spend my life researching something that only interests a handful of people? The answer was that I shelved my dream of becoming a physics professor. I wanted to do something that would have more impact on the world and also bring me financial stability in what was now a different stage of my life – after all, I had just become a father at the time.
How did your career progress after this soul-searching?
On the one hand, I continued my education in the emerging field of machine learning. On the other hand, I applied for various jobs. I applied to a small business agency as well as a bank, because I found mathematical models for risk optimization exciting. And relatively soon after that, I also applied to Siemens. During the interview, I sat across from a physicist with whom I immediately clicked. He became my group leader about six years ago. After he recently retired, I took over the leadership of his seven-person group and thus became his successor.
What kind of work do you do at Siemens?
Siemens is the world's largest provider of industrial software: More specifically, we sell simulation software that is used in the automotive industry, among others, to design cars and calculate air resistance, for example. In my team in the Technology Innovation department, we look at new technologies such as Agentic AI and knowledge graphs, create demonstrators, and show our product managers how these new technologies could be useful to customers. Why is it a good idea to use them? What new opportunities do they offer? In short, we work internally to convince people of the benefits of new technologies.
Did your time at HI-ERN teach you anything that helps you in your current job?
I can actually reuse quite a bit of what I learned there. At the Helmholtz Institute, I was introduced to the field of fluid mechanics, which I hadn't covered before—and which is enormously important here at Siemens. This knowledge helps me a lot, especially when communicating with colleagues who are practically at home in this field. In addition, your comfort zone expands with every step you take outside of it: Research at the Helmholtz Institute was one such step outside my comfort zone, as was writing proposals and familiarizing myself with innovation management. Of course, it's impossible to quantify exactly how much this has helped me. But I can say that my comfort zone has definitely expanded and I now feel comfortable in a wider range of areas.
Was there anything you particularly liked about the Jülich Research Center?
Definitely—the social interaction and events! My colleagues and I did a lot together in the evenings; after all, very few of us had families, and it was a different stage of life. At Siemens, things were naturally a bit more formal than in this student-oriented environment.