The Gerhard Ertl Young Investigator Award recognizes young researchers for their outstanding talent and research in surface science. The award has been sponsored since 2010 by Elsevier and is awarded to the winner of a competition between 5 selected nominees, which present their work with an invited talk in a special session at the DPG Spring Meeting of the Surface Science Division. Niclas S. Müller wins the Gerhard Ertl Young Investigator Award 2025 with a talk entitled “Imaging Infrared Materials Excitations with Sum-Frequency Spectro-Microscopy” on investigations of hBN monolayers and SiC metasurfaces. With the nonlinear optical microscopy techniques developed by the Paarmann and Thämer groups it is possible to obtain spatial, spectral, momentum and crystallographic information of material properties and light-matter coupling with infrared sub-diffractional spatial resolution.