Clara Immerwahr Award for Kylie Vincent

Samstag, 11. Februar 2012

Yesterday, Dr. Kylie Vincent from Oxford University was honoured as the first Clara Immerwahr Awardee. Prof. Ada Yonath, Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), Nobel Laureate 2009, gave the guest lecture.

U. Wollenberger, K. Vincent, M. Driess

Kylie Vincent and Ada Yonath

During the award's ceremony

Claudia Nasrallah and Kylie Vincent

Yesterday, Dr. Kylie Vincent from Oxford University was honoured as the first Clara Immerwahr Awardee. Prof. Ada Yonath, Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), Nobel Laureate 2009, gave the guest lecture.

The Cluster of Excellence “Unifying Concepts in Catalysis” (UniCat) had called for applications for the Clara Immerwahr Award in October 2011. The award is associated with a financial support of 15.000 Euro for a research stay at UniCat.  It aims to reward the outstanding research of an excellent young female scientist in the field of catalysis. It is thought to pave the way for setting up an independent research group in the consortium, or for establishing close collaborative links with UniCat. The Clara Immerwahr Award 2012 is funded by BASF SE, one of UniCat's partners in industry, and by the TU Berlin.

The Clara Immerwahr Award serves as an excellent example of the promotion of excellent young female scientists and is another successful measure taken by UniCat aimed at advancing female researchers. Alongside publicity for excellent women scientists, these measures include seminars on gender awareness and professionalisation of members of UniCat, the establishment of a guest scientist programme specifically for female scientists, the forming of Success Teams and the founding of the UniCat regular informal women’s meeting. More detailed information on the individual measures can be found on the UniCat gender website at www3.unicat.tu-berlin.de/Gender.54.0.html .

The Clara Immerwahr Award is a tribute by UniCat to Dr. Clara Immerwahr, who obtained her doctorate at the University of Breslau in 1900 with a research paper in physical chemistry, making her the first woman to be awarded a doctorate in chemistry from a German university. Moreover, her marriage to Fritz Haber provides a direct link to the Fritz Haber Institute, a member institution of UniCat.