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.
- Electrocatalysts: New model for charge separation at the solid-liquid interfaceHydrogen is at the heart of the transition to carbon neutrality, as both an energy carrier and a reagent for green chemistry. However, large-scale production of hydrogen via electrolysis, as well as the production of many other chemical products, requires significantly cheaper and more efficient catalysts. A precise understanding of the electrochemical processes that take place at the interface between the solid catalyst and the liquid medium is highly useful for developing better electrocatalysts. In the journal Nature Communications, an European team has now presented a powerful model that determines charge separation at the interface, the formation of the electric double layer and local electric potential variations, and the resulting influence on the catalytic activity.
- Theory meets practice – We’re heading back to HTW Berlin!The HZB’s BIPV consultancy office (BAIP) is once again coordinating and delivering the lecture series “Building-Integrated Photovoltaics”.
- AI-driven Catalyst Discovery: €30 million funding for German consortiumSix partners from research and industry, including Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), the Fritz-Haber-Institute of the Max Planck Society (FHI), BASF, Dunia Innovations, Siemens Energy, and the Technical University Berlin are launching a joint project to accelerate the catalyst discovery. The German Federal Ministry for Science, Technology and Space (BMFTR) is providing €30 million in funding for ASCEND (Accelerated Solutions for Catalysis using Emerging Nanotechnology and Digital Innovation). The research initiative targets the defossilisation of energy-intensive industries while safeguarding industrial competitiveness, with a focus on the chemical sector. The five-year project will start on 1st April 2026.