Tim Dirks wins Uwe Kappel Doctoral Prize
Congratulations to Tim Dirks, who has been awarded the Uwe Kappel doctoral prize.
His PhD thesis entitled “Plasma-driven biocatalysis and the investigation of plasma-protein interactions“, addresses three challenges in plasma-driven biocatalysis: the inactivation of enzymes by reactive plasma species, the limited production rate of H2O2, and the limited availability of suitable biocatalysts. His outstanding work on a successful strategy to protect enzymes by immobilising and binding them to beads has significantly increased the efficiency of plasma-driven biocatalysis.
The Uwe Kappel doctoral prize was awarded for the first time in November 2024. The prize was established by the Faculty of Biology and Biotechnology in cooperation with the Society of Friends of the Ruhr University to support young researchers and to honour their outstanding achievements during their doctoral studies.
Welcome to the new PI Felix Riehn
We are happy to announce that Dr. Felix Riehn (TU Dortmund, AG Albrecht ) has joined the CRC 1491 as a new PI!
Felix studies interactions of particles at the highest energies. He mostly focuses on building theoretical models and studying extensive air showers at the Pierre Auger Observatory.
Extensive air showers are formed when ultra-high energy cosmic rays that originate somewhere outside the solar system, interact with the nuclei in the Earth's atmosphere. As it turns out, none of the models we have for particle interactions are able to describe accurately what we observe in extensive air showers. This is part of the reason why we do not know exactly where the cosmic rays were originally accelerated.
In his research within the CRC, he wants to combine cosmic ray data on particle interactions from the Auger observatory with the observations of accelerator experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider to improve our understanding of particle interactions.
Interview with Julia Tjus in "AufRuhr"
The CRC 1491 speaker Julia Tjus was recently interviewed for the magazine “Aufruhr” by the Mercator Foundation.
She had the opportunity to talk about her research, with a particular focus on cosmic rays. Furthermore, she had the chance to share insights about her scientific career and provided helpful tips for young scientists.
The full interview (in German) can be found here.
Public lecture „Neutrinos: Unsichtbare Boten aus dem Kosmos “
We are pleased to invite you to the public lecture “Neutrinos: Unsichtbare Boten aus dem Kosmos " (in German).
Jonas Hellrung takes you on a journey to an extraordinary observatory at the South Pole, designed to detect neutrinos — ghostly particles that interact with matter only on the rarest of occasions and are therefore extremely difficult to capture. You will learn how scientists, including some from the Ruhr region, succeeded in creating the very first ‘photo’ of the Milky Way in neutrinos, and what this remarkable image reveals to us.
When 11.12.24 at 20:00
Where Planetarium Bochum
For registration and further information, please have a look at the Planetarium’s homepage.
Picture:
The distribution of neutrinos (shown in blue) in the Milky Way