Prestigious awards for Münster researchers

Mathematician and chemist receive funding from the European Research Council

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded two prestigious grants to academics at the University of Münster. The holder of the Leibniz Award, Prof. Joachim Cuntz from the Mathematical Institute, receives the "ERC Advanced Investigators Grant 2010" awarded to experienced, renowned academics. Prof. Frank Glorius from the Institute of Organic Chemistry receives an "ERC Starting Grant" presented to leading junior academics.

Joachim Cuntz receives his grant, worth up to 2.6 million euros, for an ambitious research project in the field of theoretical mathematics which aims to clarify basic structural issues that affect a variety of fields in mathematics. One of the reasons given by the ERC for the grant is that "Joachim Cuntz has played a decisive role in driving research in the field of C*-algebras in the last 30 years." An analysis of the Cuntz algebras and Cuntz-Krieger algebras - named after the ERC award-winner - forms the basis for any work done in the field of C*-algebras. This project of his which is now to be funded continues the work done so far, says the ERC, but also gives it a new direction that combines various mathematical theories. As a result, new light will be cast on numerous unresolved questions in a wide variety of mathematical fields.

1.5 million euros have now been made available to Frank Glorius for five years to set up a new field of research for the production of organic compounds at the Institute of Organic Chemistry. The project to be funded deals with so-called C-H (carbon-hydrogen) activation. Carbon-hydrogen compounds are found everywhere in nature, but they are often very inert and difficult to activate, unless in a very roundabout way, and to transform into the structures desired. This is the starting point for the project. New types of catalysts and processes will be developed to systematically functionalize such C-H compounds. The aim of such reactions is to convert hitherto unused natural compounds into economically utilizable products in a gentle but efficient way.

A total of four academics from Münster University have now received one of the prestigious ERC grants. Last year Prof. Yong Lei from the Institute of Material Physics was awarded a Satrting Grant and, also in 2009, Prof. Luisa De Cola (Physical Institute) received an Advanced Grant. The fourth recipient in Münster was Dr. Arndt Siekmann, a junior academic from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine, who was given a Starting Grant 2010.