Tribute to a Catalyst Expert

The Cluster of Excellence, "Unifying Concepts in Catalysis" (UniCat) will award Dr. Tracy Lohr, Northwestern University, USA, the Clara Immerwahr Award on February 9, 2018 at the Technische Universität Berlin.

The chemist will be honored for her outstanding contributions to the field of tandem catalysis for biomass processing and clean hydrogen production. She is a border crosser between homogenous and heterogeneous catalysis, between organometallic catalysis and material sciences.

Please draw attention to the Clara Immerwahr Award Ceremony in your media. Journalists are cordially invited:

Event language will be English.

Program:

Welcoming remarks by Prof. Dr. Angela Ittel, TU Berlin Vice President, and by Prof. Dr. Matthias Driess, Chair of UniCat

Welcoming address Clark Price, Minister-Counselor for Economic Affairs

Laudation by Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Freund, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Presentation of the Clara Immerwahr Award

Presentation by Dr. Tracy Lohr, Clara-Immerwahr-Preisträgerin 2018: „Thermodynamically leveraged tandem and metal oxide catalysts for deconstructing oxygenated substrates”

Guest presentation by Prof. Dr. Jana Roithová, Karls-Universität, Prag: „New methods - new insights”

Tracy Lohr will use the 15,000 Euro in prize money for joint research projects within the Cluster of Excellence, UniCat. TU-Professor Arne Thomas from the UniCat selection committee said: "With Tracy Lohr we are pleased to have identified a worthy prize winner who has published a great number of much-noticed research projects. We are convinced that the award will initiate a fruitful collaboration in the catalysis field".

"I will be working with internationally leading scientists in teh field of heterogeneous catalysis", Tracy Lohr says smiling. "The Clara Immerwahr Award is a great opportunity to research and learn in Berlin". Part of the work is planned to be conducted with Professor Robert Schlögl at the Fritz-Haber-Insitut.

The Clara Immerwahr Award is conferred by the Cluster of Excellence UniCat to honor an exceptional young female scientist in the field of catalysis, and invites the recipient to cooperate with UniCat working groups. The award will be presented in 2018 for the seventh time. It sets an example for the promotion of excellent female scientists and is a measure taken by the Cluster in order to promote women. Further activities undertaken by the Cluster to advance gender equality include, for example, gender sensitivity seminars, professionalization of UniCat members, the establishment of guest scientist programs for female scientists, and the creation of Success Teams.

The annual Clara Immerwahr Award includes 15,000 Euro and is publicized internationally. This year the prize money was donated by Bayer AG. The prize is given in honor of Dr. Clara Immerwahr, who in 1900 was the first German woman to receive a doctorate for her work in physical chemistry from the Universität Breslau.

“Unifying Concepts in Catalysis” (UniCat) is an interdisciplinary research network within the framework of the Excellence Initiative of the German Research Foundation. Its main focus is on catalysis. Four universities and two Max Planck Institutes in Berlin and Potsdam are involved in UniCat. Approximately 50 working groups collaborate across disciplines on research areas that are of major interest to future scientific developments in raw material change and energy turnaround.

The areas studied by the working groups include the chemical conversion of methane to ethene, the chemical and enzymatic activation of carbon dioxide, the catalytic production of hydrogen from water using sunlight as the energy source, and the synthesis of active substances with the help of artificial enzymes. The Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) is its host University.