Contributions to symposia and conferences by MPGC Ph.D. students (oral and poster presentations)

Poster award to Tanja Kling

1 March 2016

Tanja Kling won the Audience Poster Prize at the CECAM Workshop 'Liquid/Solid interfaces: Structure and dynamics from spectroscopy and simulations - 3rd edition', which was held at CECAM-HQ-EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland from 25 to 27 January January 2016.

Tanja Kling joined the MPGC in July 2013. In her PhD thesis project she adresses the microscopic observations that were already realized by Faraday in 1850: the surface of it is covered by a thin layer of liquid water even at temperatures far below melting. In spite of the importance of ice surfaces in terrestrial and atmospheric physical and chemical processes, the microscopic structure and dynamics of the liquid surface layer is still largely unknown, to the extent that it is conventionally called quasi-liquid layer, to distinguish it from standard liquid water. In the project classical and ab initio molecular dynamics simulations are applied to characterize the structure and dynamics of the quasi liquid layer at both prism and basal surfaces of hexagonal ice in the temperature range that extends from 230 K to the melting temperature.

One student from the group of Prof. Bonn at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research was involved in this project, who was supported by the MPGC.

Poster Award to Markus Scharfenberg

8 January 2016

Markus Scharfenberg won a Student Poster Competition Award at the International Chemical Congress of Pacific Basin Societies 2015 (Pacifichem 2015) in Honolulu.

The theme of Pacifichem 2015 was Chemical Networking: Building Bridges Across the Pacific, emphasizing the collaborative nature of chemistry as a multidisciplinary science. This conference with more than 15,000 attendees is one of the biggest conferences in the world and combines several research fields from inorganic and biological chemistry, to material science and physical chemistry.

Markus Scharfenberg joined the MPGC in September 2014. In his PhD thesis he works with multifunctional aliphatic polycarbonates made from carbon dioxide and tailored epoxide building blocks. He presented his work, which gives the possibility to functionalize reversibly this kind of polymers with functional groups, which cannot be incorporated directly during the polymerization. With this many new polymers are accessible.

Four students from the Prof. Dr. Holger Frey group at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz were involved in this project.

Poster Award to Jennifer Heidrich

3 September 2015

Jennifer Heidrich won The FEBS Journal Poster Prize at the 15th International Symposium on Phototrophic Prokaryotes (ISPP 2015) which was held in Tübingen in August 2015.

The ISPP is an international conference aiming to connect researches working with phototrophic prokaryotes, such as cyanobacteria, and topics like genetics, evolution, ecology and biotechnological applications are addressed.

Jennifer Heidrich joined the MPGC in May 2014. In her PhD thesis project she works with the protein IM30 of the cyanobacterium Synechocystis. She presented her work, which helped to discover the function of IM30 as a protein triggering membrane fusion. This discovery could radically change our understanding of the biogenesis of the thylakoid membranes, the platform where fundamental parts of photosynthesis take place.

Three students from the group of Prof. Dirk Schneider at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz and the group of Tobias Weidner from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research were involved in this project, which were all supported by the MPGC.

Poster Award to Aleeza Farrukh

28 July 2015

Aleeza Farrukh, a PhD student at MPGC, won the Poster Award at the 2015 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering, and was invited to give an oral presentation at this prestigeous conference. Mrs Farrukh works on biomaterials that support differentiation of neuronal stem cells (NSCs) and control formation of neuronal networks. At the GRC she presented a new strategy to direct axon growth of NSCs on demand using phototriggerable biomaterials. Dr. Marcelo Salierno and Dr. Julieta Paez from MPIP and Dr. Felipe Ortega from the University Medical Center (UMC) in Mainz were also involved in the project.


Aleeza Farrukh joined the Max Planck Graduate Center in 2014 as PhD student, after graduating in Chemistry at University of the Punjab and at LUMS School of Science and Engineering in Lahore, Pakistan. She works in the group "Dynamic Biointerfaces" headed by Dr. Aránzazu del Campo at MPIP, and collaborates with the department "Adult Neurogenesis & Cellular Reprogramming" headed by Prof. Benedikt Berninger at UMC in Mainz.

The Gordon Research Conferences provide an international forum for the presentation and discussion of selected cutting-edge topics in frontier research in the biological, chemical, and physical sciences, and their related technologies. They belong to the most prestigeous conferences in science at international level. Dr. Aránzazu del Campo was invited speaker at the 2015 GRC on Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering.

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