By envisioning ground-breaking ideas, six RESOLV members have beaten a fierce competition to receive a total of 11,5 Mio. € funding from the pan-European funding body ERC (European Research Council).
Prof Dr Viktoria Däschlein-Gessner has won an ERC Starting Grant - 1.5 million Euro for five years. The RUB chemist wants to develop new ligand systems with unique bonding properties. These chemical systems have an electron-rich carbon atom at their core and are bound to metals. They could be used to influence the activity of catalysts or to stabilize reactive compounds.
Dr Nicolas Plumeré has won a ERC Starting Grant - 1.5 million Euro for five years. The head of the RUB Molecular Nanostructures Research Group wants to forge highly active, but fragile catalysts for energy conversion. Plumeré will target naturally occurring enzymes that contain nickel or iron and embed them into stabilizing matrix to produce storable hydrogen.
Prof Dr Beatriz Roldán Cuenya has won the ERC Consolidator Grant - 2 million Euro for five years. The RUB physicist aims to gain new insights into the catalytic abilities of nanoparticles, particularly how the size, shape and chemical state of the particles change during a catalytic reaction. Roldan will focus on catalysts that convert carbon dioxide into useful chemicals and fuels, such as methanol, ethanol, propanol, methane or ethylene.
Prof Dr Guido Clever has won the ERC Consolidator Grant - 2 million Euro for five years. The chemist from TU Dortmund University will design and synthesize nanometer-size cages and capsules from molecular building blocks. These should pave the way to future applications in the areas of catalysis, nanomedicine and material science.
Prof Dr Martina Havenith has won an ERC Advanced Grant – 2.5 million Euro for five years. The RESOLV coordinator and speaker will develop a ground breaking methodology called “Time-Resolved THz-Calorimetry”. Havenith will tinker with Terahertz (THz) laser spectroscopy to deduce with nanosecond precision how proteins and the surrounding solvent exchange energy and rearrange themselves in a biological process.
Prof Dr Benjamin List has won an ERC Advanced Grant – 2 million Euro for five years. The director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim an der Ruhr will develop a new class of organocatalysts based on strong carbon-based acids. These new catalysts have the potential to be efficient in the selective synthesis of left-handed and right-handed molecules (the so-called chiral forms).