Sir Andre Geim erhielt den Nobelpreis für Physik 2010.

Two Nobel Laureates give public lectures at TU Dresden in June

After a two-year break due to Corona, the School of Science is looking forward to welcoming you along with your families and friends to our public lecture series „Nobelpreisträger zu Gast an der TU Dresden“. This year, we are hosting to English Sirs, who will take the audience on a journey through their lives, their research and their path to the Nobel Prize on two evenings in June.
On June 8, Physics Nobel Laureate Andre Geim will report in his lecture "A Random Walk to Graphene" how he and his colleague Konstantin Novoselov rather by chance discovered the "miracle material" graphene in 2010 in experiments after work.
And on June 22, Chemistry Nobel Laureate Gregory Winter will provide insights into how he harnessed the principles of evolution to develop novel antibody-based drugs used to combat rheumatoid arthritis, metastatic cancer, autoimmune diseases and toxins, among other diseases.
Both lectures will be held in English at 7 p.m. at the TU Dresden Lecture Hall Center. As always, admission is free. Registration is requested.

© Nicole Gierig/TUD

ERC Advanced Grant for Prof. Stefan Kaskel

Prof. Stefan Kaskel from the Faculty of Chemistry and Food Chemistry can celebrate another success in the ERC funding line. Following his first ERC Advanced Grant in 2017, he has once again received an ERC Advanced Grant, this time totaling 2.38 million euros over five years for his project “IONOLOGIC.” At the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry I, he and his team will pursue the “Ultracapacitor Logic Gates” (IONOLOGIC) project to break new ground in computer architectures based on signal processing in physiological nervous systems. This relies on ions and chemical information, and is therefore optimized to expend very little energy. They are aiming at developping ion-based computer technologies that reduce computers’ energy consumption and enable on-chip energy management in autonomous microelectronic components and biological interfaces.

© Nicole Gierig/TUD

ERC Consolidator Grant for Prof. Stefan Kaiser

Prof. Stefan Kaiser from the Faculty of Physics was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant of over two million euros for the next five years for the development of a new method for researching superconductors. At the Chair of Ultrafast Solid State Physics and Photonics, he seeks to develop a new form of spectroscopy – Higgs spectroscopy – and thus achieve a better understanding of quantum materials, in particular high-temperature superconductors. With the “T-Higgs” project, Stefan Kaiser will use terahertz lasers to induce Higgs oscillations in superconductors. Higgs oscillations emit a signal containing characteristics of the superconductor that can be read using the new method of spectroscopy, thus leading to a deeper understanding of how superconductors work. “The ERC Grant enables me to develop the new method of Higgs spectroscopy and to put together a team that will find an answer to this fascinating question,” Stefan Kaiser says, explaining his project.

From left to right: Prof. Roderich Moessner, Director of the MPI-PKS, awardee Prof. Tomaž Prosen and the Dean of the Faculty of Physics Prof. Carsten Timm.
© Crispin-I. Mokry

„Physik-Preis Dresden“ awarded to Professor Tomaž Prosen

On May 24, 2022, Prof. Tomaž Prosen from the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia received the "Physik-Preis Dresden" (Dresden Physics Prize), jointly awarded by the TU Dresden and the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (MPI-PKS). The theoretical physicist receives the award for his outstanding work on quantum mechanical many-body systems, nonequilibrium statistical physics, quantum information, classical chaos and quantum chaos.

The "golden" graduates in the new lecture hall at Fritz-Förster-Bau. © Uwe Kohn

Golden diploma for chemistry graduates

On April 28, 2022, two cohorts of former chemistry seminar groups whose graduation from TU Dresden dates back more than 50 years met. The class of 1972 including Wolfgang Hoffmann came back to the alma mater and was welcomed in the lecture hall by Prof. Michael Ruck with a presentation on chemistry at TU Dresden. In further lectures, the guests learned news about the construction activities as well as historical facts about the garden monuments on campus. The group even had the opportunity to visit the renovated Fritz-Förster-Bau, which was used by the chemistry department for a long time. The class of 1971 around Karlheinz Deutsch met with 30 former fellow students in the afternoon at Gasthof Coschütz. A special surprise for both groups was the presentation of the golden diploma certificates by Susann Mayer, the TU Dresden's graduate officer. "The diplomas at that time didn't look that nice", the golden graduates agreed.

"Detection and Localization of Eu on Biosilica by Analytical Scanning Electron Microscopy" by Ellen Hieckmann, Kaitlin K. K. Kammerlander, Lydia Köhler, Laura Neumann, Stefan Saager, Nico Albanis, Thomas Hutsch, Frank Seifert and Eike Brunner. © CC

Diatoms as storage for (radioactive) metal ions

For a long time, options have been explored to store environmentally harmful lanthanides and actinides safely. A biomaterial from unicellular algae has proven to be a promising sorbent candidate in the conducted enrichment experiments. Silica cell walls of cultivated diatoms were first treated with a Europium(III) solution and then subjected to complex analyses, including scanning electron microscopy. The collaboration between researchers from the two faculties and colleagues from the Fraunhofer Institutes FEP and IFAM in Dresden did not only provide insight into the interaction of Eu(III) ions with diatoms, which are commonly found in nature. It also elucidated the mechanical and thermal behaviour of the biosilica under electron irradiation and the sensitivity of cathodoluminescence measurements compared to energy dispersive X-ray analysis. The results were published in the journal "Microscopy and Microanalysis".

Fermentation of cyanobacteria in a photobioreactor at TU Dresden. © Tobias Gulder

Learning from Nature: Biosynthesis of cyanobacterin opens up new class of natural compounds for applications in medicine and agriculture

Researchers in the groups of Prof. Tobias Gulder from TU Dresden and Prof. Tanja Gulder from Leipzig University have succeeded in understanding the biosynthetic mechanisms for the production of the natural product cyanobacterin, which in Nature is produced in small quantities by the cyanobacteria Scytonema hofmanni. In the process, they also discovered a new class of enzymes for building carbon-carbon bonds. The (bio)chemists are thus significantly expanding the biocatalytic repertoire currently known from Nature and are opening up new, sustainable biotechnological applications in medicine and agriculture. The results of the collaboration have now been published in the renowned journal Nature Chemical Biology.
 

pixabay.com

Should I or shouldn’t I? Value-based decisions influence each other

A team of psychologists and mathematicians from the Shcool of Science have shown in a modeling study that consecutive value-based decisions influence each other. This result is particularly relevant for the creation and evaluation of questionnaires in value-based decision research. "In three experiments, we show that this dependence is reflected in human decision behavior. Furthermore, we demonstrate that in questionnaires on psychological studies, there can be errors and misjudgements of participants' decision tendencies, if this dependence is ignored," explains Stefan Scherbaum, professor of Methods of Psychology and Cognitive Modelling.

Dr. Petra Tallafuss-Koch. © Michael Kretzschmar

New head of the Academic Affairs Office

As of April 1, 2022, Dr. Petra Tallafuss-Koch has taken over the head of the Academic Affairs Office. Her way to the Willers Bau was not far - both in terms of content and space, because since 2017 she was the deputy head of the department 7.1. in Mommsenstraße responsible, among other things, for concept development in the context of the Excellence Strategy. Prior to that, as founding coordinator of the Center for Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching, she had developed, for example, the FLiK modules for research-oriented teaching and the study success project "Orientation Platform Research & Practice." "The Academic Affairs Office combines the examination offices with special expertise in course development and course management. I have gotten to know a team there that is as competent as it is cordial and service-oriented, so I am pleased to be able to take over from Peer Kittel," explains Dr. Tallafuss-Koch. As the Academic Affairs Office is currently being restructured internally with a front desk and back office, there are a variety of tasks to be mastered, including the readjustment of the service offering: "The employees of the Academic Affairs Office have always been there for the students and lecturers, during the Corona period. Almost all questions could be answered by e-mail, telephone and virtually. This expansion of services is a positive side effect of the pandemic and should be maintained in the future."
Petra Tallafuss-Koch studied literature, theology and education at the University of Heidelberg and Queen's University Kingston, Canada. She earned her doctorate at the Rijksuniversität in Groningen, the Netherlands, and completed a master's degree in science marketing as a fellow of the Stifterverband at the TU Berlin. Before moving to TU Dresden, she worked at Freie Universität Berlin, among other places, where she headed the staff group International Network University.
 

Exhibition

Der Preis des Glases - Vogelschlag an Glasfassaden

 Entry hall of the Biology building

Public lecture

Nobel laureate Andre Geim

 Audimax, HSZ

Public lecture

Nobel laureate Gregory Winter

 Audimax, HSZ

Information event

Lab tour for prospective chemistry and food chemistry students

 Entry hall of the CHE building

© TUD/ Nicole Gierig

How does the grease spot vanish? Janine uncovers - Episode 8

Chemist Janine has a huge grease stain on her T-shirt and wonders how she can get it out again. Of course, washing helps. But why can detergent dissolve grease stains, but not water? The answer is surfactants, and Janine explains what they are in the video.

© Biermann-Jung

Renaissance of nuclear energy? New episode of "Gute Frage" with physicist Steffen Turkat

In Germany, the last nuclear power plants are expected to go offline at the end of 2022. Yet the European Union has only recently classified nuclear energy as sustainable. How does that fit together? Susanne explores the question of what the future of nuclear power looks like with experts from various scientific disciplines. To do so, she talks about the search for final repositories, the increased safety of modern reactors, and changes in the public's attitude toward nuclear energy.

Stand of the Faculty of Mathematics in the HSZ. from left ot right: Jun.-Prof. Markus Schmidtchen, Dr. Simon Praetorius and Prof.in Anita Behme. © Nicole Gierig

Review: Uni-Tag 2022

After two years of digital UNI-TAG, this year's event took place again on campus on May 21. On this day, TU Dresden offers all interested parties the chance to get to know more than 100 study programs and to inform themselves about the study requirements and application modalities. In addition, there are interesting offers around the topics of housing, financing & leisure in Dresden.

Dr. Susann Auer has also already spoken to the social media team at TU Dresden about her research. © TUD

On the track of cabbage hernia

In the program "MDR Garten", Dr. Susann Auer gives insights into her research on cabbage hernia at the Faculty of Biology.

Prof. Thomas Heine

MDR Podcast Interview with Prof. Thomas Heine

In an interview with MDR Aktuell, Prof. Thomas Heine talks about a new method developed at TU Dresden to gain the rare isotope deuterium rather cheaply and explains why he has received emails from the science fiction community about it.