Dr. Michelle Browne receives Daimler and Benz Foundation Fellowship
Michelle Browne heads a Helmholtz Young Investigators Group on electrocatalysis at HZB and is now a fellow of the Daimler and Benz Foundation. © HZB/ K. Fuchs
Michelle Browne heads a Helmholtz Young Investigators Group on electrocatalysis at HZB. She has now been selected as a fellow of the Daimler and Benz Foundation. She will receive 40,000 euros over the next two years and, in addition, access to an excellent research network.
With her research, she wants to contribute to the development of better catalysts for the production of green hydrogen. To increase the percentage of green H2 produced by water splitting compared to the production of grey H2 by steam reformation, it is necessary to improve the efficiency associated with low temperature membrane water splitting technologies (e.g. Anion Exchange Membrane (AEM)).
One way to improve the efficiency is to replace the current state-of the art catalysts with materials that are more active and stable which will result in a drastic paradigm shift in green H2 production. This project will focus on tailoring MXene and metal oxide catalyst layers to produce Green H2 in AEM devices.
Michelle Browne is currently the head of the Helmholtz Young Investigator Electrocatalysis: Synthesis to Device group at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin. She holds a Ph.D in Chemistry from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland). She has received prestigious fellowships and awards for her research, including, the Curious Minds Research Award, L’Oreal UNESCO Rising Talent UK & Ireland Fellowship, International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE) Elsevier Prize for Applied Electrochemistry award and the Clara Immerwahr Award from UniSysCat.
With this programme, the Daimler and Benz Foundation sets out to reinforce the autonomy of the next generation of academics and to support the careers of committed young academics after earning their doctorates.
- Marcel Risch has been appointed Professor at the Freie Universität BerlinMarcel Risch was appointed to a W2-S professorship in the Department of Physics at Freie Universität Berlin in August 2026. His research group has been transformed into the department 'Mechanisms of Sustainable Electrocatalysis'. Risch investigates the fundamental mechanisms of electrocatalytic reactions and, on this basis, develops knowledge- and data-driven strategies to improve electrocatalysts for the sustainable production of hydrogen, fuels and chemicals.
- BESSY II: High-resolution insights into individual biomolecules and catalystsVery small biological samples and even individual biomolecules can now be examined under near-physiological conditions with high confidence at the BESSY II infrared beamline with a newly validated and improved technique: The nanoscale infrared spectroscopy (s-SNOM) with ultra-thin silicon-based membranes. An international team demonstrated after an initial proof of concept, that high-resolution (a few tens of nanometres) nano-IR measurements reliably match expected far-field IR spectra in an aqueous environment. This methodological advance provides a solid foundation for studying biomaterials or observing catalytic processes in a liquid environment.
- Thin nickel films boost green hydrogen productionUltra-thin nickel oxide coatings can significantly improve the performance of anion exchange membrane (AEM) water electrolysers, a promising technology for producing green hydrogen. This was demonstrated by a team led by HZB scientist Dr. Michelle Browne. The results show that a nickel oxide film only 10 nanometres thick outperformed conventional nickel oxide powder electrodes while using less than 1% of the catalyst material. The study is published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A,