Friday, 17 July, 2015

From fundamental research to application - CeNS Innovation Award 2015

CeNS and four LMU spin-off companies jointly award two innovative theses

 

From left to right: Prof. Ulrich Schollwöck (Spokesman of the CeNS Board), Prof. Khaled Karrai (scientific director attocube systems AG, jury member), Aurora Manzi, Dr. Christof Mast, Prof. Tim Liedl (member of the CeNS board, jury member), and Dr. Susanne Hennig (CeNS managing director)

On July 17, the CeNS Innovation Award was awarded at the Center for Nanoscience for the first time. One PhD student and one master's student received the award for their innovative work in application-oriented nanoscience. The awardees were selected by a top-class jury including Prof. Dr. Krubasik, president of the DPG, Prof. Khaled Karrai, scientific director of attocube systems, and members from LMU, TUM, and the University of Augsburg.

While most scientific prices emphasize on findings and results in fundamental research only, the CeNS Innovation Award decidedly attaches importance to future applicability. The prize money is donated by four successful spin-offs of CeNS, all with their own company history directly connected to the idea of the award. The companies attocube systems AG, ibidi GmbH, Nanion Technologies GmbH und NanoTemper Technologies GmbH together with CeNS honored gifted and creative junior researchers, whose results are not only interesting for fundamental research but also promising for technological applications.

Aurora Manzi from the group of Professor Jochen Feldmann (LMU) received an award worth € 3.000 in the category "Master's thesis". In her thesis, Aurora Manzi explored in cooperation with GE Global Research the usage of solar energy as an alternative to fossile fuels. The idea behind her Master's thesis was to create a photocatalytic system able to recycle CO₂ and to transform it, from an undesired waste, into a valuable energy source, e.g. methane, by using the solar energy to drive the uphill CO₂ reduction reaction. Aurora Manzi discovered a novel light-induced technique to convert under unrestrictive conditions a material prepared in an easy and well-defined way, such as cadmium sulfide nanorods, into copper sulfide nanorods, whose properties are suitable for in situ CO₂ reduction. Performing photocatalytic experiments she demonstrated that the formed copper sulfide nanorods can be used as an efficient catalyst for CO₂ reduction to carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH₄) under broad visible light illumination.
Aurora Manzi, who originally comes from Italy, is currently continuing her academic career as a PhD student in Professor Feldmann's group.

In the category "PhD thesis", the jury awarded the prize worth 6.000 EUR to Dr. Christof Mast from the group of Professor Dieter Braun (LMU). In his PhD work Dr. Mast demonstrated how a reversible elongation process can be enhanced with the help of a thermal gradient. He also showed in this work that a thermal trap is able to trigger a polymerase driven, exponential replication of DNA via the cyclic fluid convection between the hot and cold boundaries of the reaction vessel. During the replication process, the product is concentrated in the center of the thermal trap and therefore protected against diffusion into the diluted reservoir. This new technique could be used for different applications: Firstly, in many applications, there is often just a little amount of solution available. For the purpose, the thermal trap could allow for low volume, fast, continuous and high S/N replication of DNA/RNA. Secondly, it could be used for setting up the selective properties of an aptamer-creating machine.  Aptamers are small ssDNA strands that are evolved to bind to a specific target. They are frequently used in biotechnological and therapeutic applications due to their ability of specific chemical recognition.