Two new Helmholtz Young Investigator Groups will start in 2019
Starting in 2019, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) will be establishing two new Helmholtz Young Investigator Groups and thereby strengthening its competencies in catalysis research. The Helmholtz Association will be funding each group with 150,000 euros annually over a period of five years, and HZB will be matching that sum with its own funds.
The group of Dr. Christopher Seiji Kley will be developing light-absorbing materials and catalysts for the sunlight-driven conversion of carbon dioxide and water into fuels. The Young Investigator Group will be introducing concepts inspired from biology as a way to increase the catalysts’ energy efficiency and to maximise the catalytic activity for longer-chain hydrocarbons. The planned start for the group is in March 2019.
Dr. Olga Kasian’s group will be researching what are the factors currently limiting the performance of catalysts in solar hydrogen production. To do so, they will be analysing the catalysts’ uppermost atomic layers and explaining the reaction mechanisms by directly detecting the intermediates and products. BESSY II offers the latest spectroscopic methods for studying the electronic changes in the materials in-operando. Olga Kasian’s Young Investigator Group will kick off in May 2019.
Two out of ten new Helmholtz Young Investigator Groups at HZB
In the recent selection process for heads of Young Investigator Groups, an interdisciplinary jury selected ten talents from a total of 23 applicants. HZB came out very successfully in the selection round: out of ten newly funded Helmholtz Young Investigator Groups, two are to be established at HZB in 2019.
About the “Helmholtz Young Investigators” programme
The research programme fosters highly qualified young researchers who completed their doctorate three to six years ago. The heads of the Young Investigator Groups receive support through a tailored training and mentoring programme and are assured long-term prospects at HZB. One aim of the programme is to strengthen the networking of Helmholtz centres and universities. The costs – 300,000 euros per year per group over five years – are covered half by the Helmholtz President’s Initiative and Networking Fund, and half by the Helmholtz centres.
- Only at BESSY II worldwide: IR nanoscopy at very long THz wavelengthsThe team at the IRIS beamline at BESSY II has created a new experimental option: They achieved infrared nanoscopy with a spatial resolution of around 50 nm at very long THz wavelengths. This was possible thanks to a temporal pattern of light pulses known as the low-alpha operating mode at BESSY II. Worldwide, BESSY II is the only synchrotron light source at which users could perform nanoscopy in a single setup from 25 to 4000 cm-1, a unique opportunity for ultra-broadband characterisation of complex materials at the nanoscale in both the life sciences and materials sciences.
- Ultrafast demagnetisation - Thinner iron, stronger effectThe thinner an iron film, the more easily it can be demagnetised by a laser pulse. Researchers at the University of Duisburg-Essen, working with Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin and other partners, have discovered why: the key lies in the magnetic order at the material's interfaces. In the long term, these findings could contribute to the development of new technologies for magnetic data storage. The results have been published in the scientific journal Advanced Science.
- HZB congratulates Peter Hegemann on winning the Nobel PrizeOur warmest congratulations go to Peter Hegemann, Professor of Neuroscience and Experimental Biophysics at Humboldt University in Berlin. Together with Prof. Georg Nagel (Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg) and Prof. Karl Deisseroth (Stanford University, USA), he has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. We are delighted for him, his team, Humboldt University and the entire Berlin scientific community.