The HZB Graduate Center is here now
The HZB “DR coordination” is now the HZB Graduate Center. Since the beginning of 2018, the DR coordination has been continuously expanding the offers and standards at the HZB for doctoral researchers and their advisors. The ideas and suggestions that were collected in discussions with numerous stakeholders and in various HZB committees on this topic are leading the path and are incorporated in the set up of a uniform HZB-wide umbrella structure for doctoral researchers and their advisors - the HZB Graduate Center.
The main goal is to create the best possible conditions for the successful completion of the doctorate and at the same time to offer doctoral researchers space for individual development and further development opportunities.
With the introduction of the revised doctoral guidelines and the HZB supervision agreement at the beginning of last year, an important milestone was reached in setting up the umbrella structure. Uniform, transparent and reliable standards for all HZB doctoral researchers have been established, support and qualification offers for them as well as their advisors are continuously expanded and further developed.
From now on, the HZB Graduate Center provides all offers and services that were perviously provided by the "DR coordination".
For more information on the standards and offers for doctoral researchers at HZB, please take a look at the Graduate Center's homepage or contact its staff directly.
- Green hydrogen: How photoelectrochemical water splitting may become competitiveSunlight can be used to produce green hydrogen directly from water in photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells. So far, systems based on this "direct approach" have not been energetically competitive. However, the balance changes as soon as some of the hydrogen in such PEC cells is used in-situ for a catalytic hydrogenation reaction, resulting in the co-production of chemicals used in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. The energy payback time of photoelectrochemical "green" hydrogen production can be reduced dramatically, the study shows.
- Superstore MXene: New proton hydration structure determinedMXenes are able to store large amounts of electrical energy like batteries and to charge and discharge rather quickly like a supercapacitor. They combine both talents and thus are a very interesting class of materials for energy storage. The material is structured like a kind of puff pastry, with the MXene layers separated by thin water films. A team at HZB has now investigated how protons migrate in the water films confined between the layers of the material and enable charge transport. Their results have been published in the renowned journal Nature Communications and may accelerate the optimisation of these kinds of energy storage materials.
- TU Berlin appoints Renske van der Veen as professorFor the past two years, Dr Renske van der Veen has led a research group in time-resolved X-ray spectroscopy and electron microscopy at HZB. Her research focuses on catalytic processes that enable, for example, the production of green hydrogen. She has now been appointed to a S-W2 professorship at the Institute of Optics and Atomic Physics (IOAP) at the Technische Universität Berlin.