iRTG-ParSciTech members honoured at spring meetings on interfaces, adsorption and zeolites

CRC 1411 is proud to announce that three of its doctoral researchers from the integrated Research Training Group in Particle Science and Technology (iRTG-ParSciTech) have garnered awards at two high-profile scientific meetings held in late February and early March.

A double success at home

From February 26–28, 2025, the Institute of Separation Science and Technology and the Erlangen Center for Interface Research and Catalysis, both institutes of FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, hosted the 36th German Zeolite Conference and Annual Meeting of the DECHEMA working group on Adsorption. The event attracted 230 participants from 11 countries, featuring 6 plenary talks, 50 short lectures, and 87 poster presentations.

CRC 1411’s strong involvement was reflected by 9 poster contributions from its researchers, many of whom also assisted in running the conference. Three of the conference organizers—Prof. Dr. Matthias Thommes, Prof. Dr. Martin Hartmann, and Dr. Dorothea Wisser—are principal investigators in CRC 1411.

As a special kickoff, a pre-event doctoral workshop—co-sponsored by CRC 1411—focused on the characterization of nanoporous materials. Here, Dr. Benjamin Apeleo-Zubiri, another CRC 1411 principal investigator, contributed a seminar entitled “Introduction to nanotomography techniques for the scale-bridging 3D characterization of micro-, meso- and macroporous structures.”

To cap off a well-organized and highly sucessful meeting on home ground, we are delighted that two of our iRTG-ParSciTech doctoral researchers received poster prizes:

• Johannes Wieczorek for his poster: “Chromatographic process development for polydisperse products.”
• Lukas Sandner for his poster: “Advanced textural characterization by NMR relaxometry.”

Award-winning presentation in Frankfurt

Hot on the heels of that success in Erlangen, the Annual Meeting of the DECHEMA/VDI working groups on Gas Cleaning, Mechanical Liquid Separation, and Interface-Determined Systems and Processes took place from March 6–7, 2025, at DECHEMA-Haus in Frankfurt am Main. Among the broad range of industry and academic participants, CRC 1411 researchers delivered four presentations on topics central to designing particulate products.

During the conference, Monika Stadelmaier—another iRTG-ParSciTech doctoral candidate—claimed a Presentation Prize in the “Interfaces” category for her talk on “Morphological Stability of Thin Noble Metal Patches on Curved Substrates.”

A further highlight was the plenary lecture by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Peukert, whose vision and leadership led to the initiation of CRC 1411 in 2020. His keynote traced the evolution of product design strategies from early filtration research to advanced methods for synthesizing and separating functional nanoparticles—an approach now at the core of CRC 1411’s mission.

Congratulations to our award-winning doctoral researchers, and thanks to all who represented CRC 1411 at these spring conferences. Their achievements highlight the impactful research and collaborative spirit that define our consortium’s vision for designing the particulate products of tomorrow.