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.
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- Superconducting TES array X-ray spectrometer goes into operation at BESSY IIEurope's first and only TES-spectrometer at a synchrotron source is now in operation at BESSY II, developed within a collaboration between the HZB, the MPI-CEC (Mühlheim-an-der-Ruhr, Germany) and the NIST (Boulder CO, USA). The photon detection efficiency of the new instrument exceeds that of wavelength-dispersive X-ray emission spectrometers by a factor of 100 to 1000. It will be used to investigate the electronic properties of atomically thin layers, nanostructures and highly diluted atomic and molecular samples. The team is looking forward to receiving exciting research proposals from the user community.
- Magnon momentum microscopy: A new window into nanoscale spin-wavesAn international team lead by the Max Born Institute has developed a new type of momentum microscopy to image magnons — the quanta of collectively excited spins — directly in two-dimensional reciprocal space using soft X-rays. Measurements have taken place at BESSY II and PETRA III, first author ist the HZB physicist Steffen Wittrock. Owing to its remarkable sensitivity, simplicity, and access to nanometer-scale wavelengths, this novel technique establishes a powerful and versatile platform for exploring nonlinear magnon interactions, which are promising for future computing schemes.