“After all, science is essentially international, and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it.”
Marie Curie, Nobel Laureate in Physics
Cooperation Partners
TO ESTABLISH NEW AND NURTURE EXISTING INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIONS BETWEEN SCIENTISTS IN GÖTTINGEN AND THOSE ABROAD WITH SIMILAR AND COMPLEMENTARY INTERESTS IN ENERGY CONVERSION SCIENCE
Energy science is so scientifically diverse and of such growing importance, that the field cries out for the advantageous development of international partnering opportunities. We are rapidly initiating many new international research partnerships especially with China – the scientifically fastest growing nation – and with the United States – the scientifically most established nation. Student, post-doctoral and professor exchanges as well as international joint projects will be fostered by the Center.
Partnerships
Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, China
Of particular current importance is strengthening of a German User community for the Dalian Coherent Light Source in Dalian China – the world’s first highly coherent vacuum ultraviolet free electron laser. This initiative would provide tunable Vacuum ultraviolet laser light of unprecedented intensity and flux between 200 and 50 nm providing a remarkable tool for energy science. The partnership would connect scientists from Göttingen with the CAS Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, the premier CAS institute in China of relevance to basic energy Research.
The ICASEC cooperates with the Max Planck – EPFL Center. The Max Planck – EPFL Center serves as a forum for cooperative research by bringing together scientists of the Max Planck Society (MPS) and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). In joint projects scientists of the Center explore novel scientific aspects of (bio)molecular nanostructures at the interface between physics, chemistry, engineering and life sciences. The Center also creates new educational opportunities for students and young scientists. The Summer School 2016 was jointly organized by the MP -EPFL-Center and the ICASEC. Furthermore, Alec M. Wodtke is adjunct professor at the EPFL School of Basic Sciences since 2015.
Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia, Spain
The ICIQ in Tarragona is a world-class catalysis research institute and a prominent partner of the ICASEC. Short-term research visits of several PhD students and postdocs involved in ICASEC projects to the ICIQ have been supported in the framework of an official research staff mobility agreement between the two institutions. This allowed the young researchers from Göttingen to spend periods ranging from 2 weeks to 3 months in ICIQ partner groups, mostly in the group of Prof. Antoni Llobet. Through these research visits the young researchers acquired international experience and intercultural communication skills, and they beneficially broadened their scientific horizon. Specifically, the research stays contributed to the thorough mechanistic understanding of new molecular catalysts for water oxidation (including chemically, electrochemically or photochemically driven catalysts) developed in Göttingen; water oxidation is a key reaction in the energy research field and is usually seen as the bottleneck in most artificial photosynthesis schemes.
SFB 1073 Atomic scale control of energy conversion, Georg-August Universitiy of Göttingen
The topic of the SFB 1073 – Atomic Scale Control of Energy Conversion – is closly related to ICASEC. ICASEC and the SFB jointly organzied the Summer School 2018.
RTG 2455 Benchmark experiments for numerical quantum chemistry
The research training group (RTG) “Benchmark Experiments for Numerical Quantum Chemistry” (BENCh) will establish a high-level research programme aiming to provide landmark experiments for quantum chemical methods benchmarking.