Timo Stünkel and Constantin Stuckhardt received this year's Evonik Award for outstanding achievements during their theses. Timo Stünkel was able to convince with his contribution to the iodine-catalyzed synthesis of trifluorinated tetralins as part of his master's thesis. Constantin Stuckhardt received the prize for the publication on photoclick reactions of acylsilanes with indoles, which he completed during his doctoral thesis.

The new method for arylation of unactivated alkenes is based on a ternary nickel(Ni)-hydrogen atom transfer (HAT) photodox (PC) synergy system (schematically shown in the middle). Left side: structural formula of an aryl group (top) and an unactivated alkene, right side: arylated alkene after synthesis.

The chemists Prof. Dr. Frank Glorius and Prof. Dr. Armido Studer of the Organisch-Chemisches Institut and the biologist Prof. Dr. Jörg Kudla from the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität (WWU) Münster are represented in the current citation ranking of the US company "Clarivate Analytics" and are thus among the most cited researchers worldwide.

Great honour for Prof. Dr. Armido Studer: The "Academia Europaea" has accepted the chemist from the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität (WWU) Münster as a new member. The Academia Europaea awards membership to individuals who have demonstrated "sustained academic excellence".

[...] Ever smaller structures for functionalizing semiconductor materials such as silicon cannot be produced using the approaches of classical technology. Scientists have now presented a new approach in the journal Nature Chemistry: They show that stable and yet very well-ordered molecular single layers can be produced on silicon surfaces - by self-assembly. To do this, they use N-heterocyclic carbenes. [...]

Chemist Dr. Manuel van Gemmeren [...] has received the Lecturer Award of the Chemical Industry Fund. He accepted the award, which is endowed with 75,000 euros, at a virtual conference. With his research group, the scientist has been studying so-called carbon-hydrogen (C-H) functionalizations at WWU since 2016. These are chemical reactions with which stable C-H bonds can be converted into complex target structures. [...]

Great honour for Prof. Dr. Frank Glorius: The chemist from the Westphalian Wilhelms University (WWU) Münster is a new member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. With this election, the oldest scientific-medical learned society in the German-speaking world honours his extraordinary scientific achievements in the field of catalysis chemistry and the development of functional molecules.

The University of Münster is establishing a new Research Training Group funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The bilateral doctoral program "Functional pi-Systems: Activation, Interaction and Application" will start in May and will receive funding of around five million euros for four and a half years.

Prof. Dr. Ryan Gilmour from the Institute of Organic Chemistry at Münster University has been elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), Scotland´s national academy of science and letters. As one of seven personalities elected as corresponding fellows, the chemist joins the ranks of distinguished Fellows resident abroad. “This is the greatest honour of my professional career to date and I look forward to strengthening the bonds between the two countries that I call home”, says Ryan Gilmour.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved two new Priority Programmes (SPP) coordinated by the University of Münster: Bioinformatician Prof Erich Bornberg-Bauer from the Institute of Evolution and Biodiversity is leading the project "Genomic Basis of Evolutionary Innovations (GEvol)", and Chemist Prof Frank Glorius from the Institute of Organic Chemistry is coordinating the project "Use and Development of Machine Learning for Molecular Applications - Molecular Machine Learning". Both programmes focus on informatics technologies in the natural sciences.
Cf. NEWS - Highlights on the Glorius webpage

Whether in beta-blockers to treat high blood pressure or in natural products: So-called vicinal aminoalcohols are high-quality organic compounds that are found in many everyday products. However, their production is difficult. For a long time, chemists are trying to develop efficient methods of synthesizing them. In their recent study published in the journal Nature Catalysis, scientists led by Prof. Dr. Frank Glorius of Münster University have found a solution for the production of a special variant of aminoalcohols. "The new method helps to study the properties of the substance and to find applications for these new compounds in the future", emphasizes Frank Glorius from the Organic Chemistry Institute at Münster University.

A great success for the University of Münster: the German Research Foundation (DFG) is funding two new Collaborative Research Centres (CRC). The two research alliances – entitled “inSight – Multiscale imaging of organ-specific inflammation” and “Intelligent matter: From responsive to adaptive nanosystems” – will together be receiving funding of more than 20 million euros. The projects will be starting in January 2021, running initially for four years. The new Centres are a boost two of the research focuses which the University of Münster has: “Cell Dynamics and Imaging” and “Nanosciences”. "What great news! This is an impressive success for all scientists involved in the CRC, but also for the university as a whole," emphasises Rector Prof. Johannes Wessels.

A great distinction for a chemist from the University of Münster: the European Research Council (ERC) has awarded Dr. Manuel van Gemmeren an ERC Starting Grant worth 1.5 million euros. The EU-funded research project that van Gemmeren will lead over the coming five years, belongs to the field of organic chemistry. Since 2016, the researcher and his working group at Münster University have been studying so-called C-H-functionalizations – chemical reactions by means of which C-H-bonds, which are typically non-reactive, can be converted directly into complex target structures. “Such methods are important for the development of sustainable chemical value chains, especially for the synthesis of complex organic compounds,” Manuel van Gemmeren explains. “These compounds can then be used as active agents for example in medicines,” he adds.

Longer ranges for electric vehicles and the effective storage of electricity from renewable energies – these are research topics for the future which PhD students in Münster will be working on in a new international Graduate School. The research centre for “Battery Chemistry, Characterization, Analysis, Recycling and Application” (BACCARA for short) was officially opened on August 5 at the MEET Battery Research Centre at the University of Münster. It was set up with the participation of Münster University’s Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy and the Helmholtz Institute Münster – an outstation of the Jülich Research Centre. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is providing 9.5 million euros of funding for the school over five years.
“Promoting junior researchers will be decisive for the future success of battery research at Münster and is therefore especially important for the NRW government,” said Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen, NRW’s Minister of Culture and Science, as she presented the confirmation of funding at the MEET Battery Research Centre. “I very much hope that the BACCARA research school will be included in the CVs of many young researchers developing high-performance batteries of the future,” she added. She expressed her thanks to Prof. Martin Winter, the scientific director of the Battery Research Centre, Prof. Frank Glorius from the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Münster, and the technical and commercial director of MEET, Dr. Falko Schappacher, who, she said, “have developed this project with a high degree of commitment.”

A chemist at the University of Münster is awarded a great honour: the National Academy of Sciences, “Leopoldina”, recently appointed Prof. Armino Studer as a new member. In doing so, the Academy acknowledges his outstanding scientific achievements. “For me, it is a very special accolade to be part of the oldest society of scientific and medical scholars in German-speaking countries,” says Armido Studer.

For his work in the field of catalysis science, the chemist Prof. Frank Glorius from the University of Münster has received the "2020 Mitsui Chemicals Catalysis Science Award". The prize, endowed with 5 million yen (the equivalent of almost 41,000 euros), is awarded every two years to outstanding chemists under 47 years of age. This year's focus is sustainability, to highlight the social issues including plastic waste management to which the chemical industry could contribute.

They occur in nature, are reactive and play a role in many biological processes: polyenes. It is no wonder that chemists have for a long time been interested in efficiently constructing these compounds – not least in order to be able to use them for future biomedical applications. However, such designs are currently neither simple nor inexpensive and present organic chemists with major challenges. Scientists at the University of Münster headed by Prof. Ryan Gilmour have now found a bio-inspired solution to the problem: They succeeded in constructing complex polyenes such as retinoic acid from simple, geometrically well-defined alkene building blocks. To do this, the scientists used small molecules as "antennas" which they excited with light, thereby enabling difficult chemical reactions to proceed via a process known as “Energy Transfer Catalysis”.

In the production of compounds, chemists have the fundamental goal of finding strategies that are most selective and avoid waste products. Breakthroughs in this area serve, among other things, to drive industrial innovation and drug development. In this context, allylic substitution reactions using catalysts made of so-called transition metals have already led to significant advances in science. The catalysts cause that in a molecule a functional group is replaced by another group in allylic position, i.e. in direct proximity to a carbon-carbon double bond.

Prof. Frank Glorius from Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster / Germany receives the Otto-Roelen-Medal 2020. This prize will be awarded by DECHEMA and the German Catalysis Society in recognition of his developments in the field of chemo- and stereoselective hydrogenation of aromatics.

Organic molecules with atoms of the semi-metal boron are among the most important building blocks for synthesis products that are needed to produce drugs and agricultural chemicals. However, during the usual chemical reactions used in industry, the valuable boron unit, which can replace another atom in a molecule, is often lost. Chemists at the University of Münster have now succeeded in significantly expanding the range of applications of commercially and industrially used boron compounds, so-called allylboronic esters. The study has been published in the scientific journal "Chem".

Prof. Frank Glorius, an organic chemist at the University of Münster, has been awarded the Gay-Lussac Humboldt Prize for his outstanding research and his close links to France in his work. He received the prize in Paris on 7 May. The French Ministry of Higher Education and Research awards the prize to excellent German researchers, in all disciplines, who are seen as examples of special collaboration between the two countries. Once a year, two researchers are chosen who each receive 60,000 euros for the purpose of further extending the collaborations they have.

International Award for Organic Chemist at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (WWU): Prof. Dr. Armido Studer is this year's winner of the "Pedler Award", which is awarded by the British "Royal Society of Chemistry". He receives the prize for his "outstanding contribution to method development in the field of radical chemistry," the organization emphasizes. The award commemorates the British chemist Alexander Pedler and is awarded annually for important scientific contributions in organic chemistry to internationally established researchers. In addition to a medal Armido Studer receives the invitation to lecture at various universities in England.