Meyer Group News

Martina Käß has been awarded a PhD fellowship of the "Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes". Please join us in congratulating Martina on this well-earned honor.

Amanda E. King (University of Wisconsin, Madison) has been awarded an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship. Please join us in congratulating Amanda on this well deserved honor!!!

Amanda is currently working on her PhD thesis under the supervision of Profs. Shannon Stahl and Thomas Brunold. She is expected to join the Meyer lab for her postdoctoral studies in fall 2009. Amanda will be studying aspects of catalytic H2O oxidation, such as the mechanism of oxygen – oxygen bond formation in high-valent transition metal oxo and hydroxo complexes. These studies are relevant to photo-catalytic water splitting chemistry as observed in the biological oxygen-evolving complex (OEC) of Photosystem II.The Meyer group is eagerly anticipating her arrival and extends our heartiest congratulations to Amanda!

Professor Charles “Chuck” Casey (University of Wisconsin, Madison-Wisconsin) will be presenting a seminar on Monday, July 20th 2009, titled “An Efficient and Chemoselective Iron Catalyst for the Hydrogenation of Ketones”.

Professor Casey’s research group is interested in studying the mechanisms of organometallic reactions and in developing an understanding of homogeneous catalysis. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Among the many awards, he received the ACS award in Organometallic Chemistry and the A. C. Cope Scholar Award. Chuck (photo left) is visiting our group from Saturday through Tuesday. Please welcome Chuck!

Tuesday, June 2th 2009 was Erlangen day at the local Bergkirchweih festival, and our group joined the rest of the city in hoisting a mug. Below is a picture of the group at the Steinbach Bräu keller. You can see more pictures in the photo gallery.

Our heartiest congratulations to Professor Daniel Mindiola (Indiana University, Bloomington Indiana)! Dan has been granted the prestigious “Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award”. With this fellowship, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation awards internationally renowned scientists and scholars, who are producing cutting-edge achievements which have seminal influence on their discipline beyond their immediate field of work.

Dan is internationally recognized for his contributions to the field of catalysis. He has devised methods, allowing for the rational preparation of molecules that are suspected to be essential intermediates of catalytic cycles. By making these species verifiable and accessible to future optimization, he advances catalyst design, thus minimizing energy cost and maximizing resources. Dan is hosted by Prof. Roesky at the University of Göttingen and by our group at the University of Erlangen – Nürnberg.

Dan & his family (Katti, Niobe & Juan Daniel) will be staying with us from May 29 through January 2010. Dan will be staying in his guest office on the 3rd floor of the Inorganic Chemistry building (Egerlandstr. 1, Office: 3.19). Please feel free to meet with him; he is a super nice guy and a great synthetic chemist!

Our heartiest congratulations to Dr. Marat Khusniyarov and Dr. Carsten Streb. Marat and Carsten were awarded a prestigious Liebig fellowship from the "Fonds der Chemischen Industrie". Marat has started his independent work in Mai 2009 and Carsten will join us in October 2009 for their independent research work towards their habilitation.

Marat obtained his PhD at Philipps-Universität Marburg with Prof. Jörg Sundermeyer (2006), afterwards he joined the group of Prof. Karl Wieghardt (MPI for Bioinorganic Chemistry) as a postdoctoral-fellow. Now he has started his independent research career focused on the development of photoswitchable magnetic materials funded by the FCI.

Carsten Streb will join our team in October 2009 as a Liebig-Fellow of the FCI. Carsten gained his Diplom-Chemiker degree at TU Kaiserslautern in 2005, working with Prof. Martin Hartmann. He then moved to the University of Glasgow where he obtained his PhD in 2008 (supervisor: Prof Lee Cronin) working on metal-oxide based molecular materials. Currently, he works at the University of Glasgow and James Watt Nanofabrication Centre, investigating complex functional nanostructures based on molecular metal oxide precursors. His future research will be focussed around alkoxide-based architectures as functional materials.

May, 2009: Karsten has been awarded an honorary membership of the Israel Chemical Society (ICS). He is the 29th scientist to be elected lifetime honorary member.

The 365 winners of the 2009 ‘365 Landmarks in the Land of Ideas’ contest are in – and our colleague Prof. H. Kisch is one of them!!! From more than 2,000 applications received from companies, research institutes, art and cultural institutions, community and charity initiatives, a panel of 18 judges picked his research project “Frischluftfarbe” as one of the winners. As a result the “Institut für Anorganische Chemie” was selected as one of ‘365 Landmarks in the Land of Ideas’. Every landmark demonstrates the multifaceted potential of Germany as a place of innovation. Congratulations to Prof. Kisch for his achievement and a big “Thank you” to him for bringing Inorganic Chemistry at Erlangen into the national limelight!

Welcome to our guest Dr. Alistair Frey from the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK!
He is visiting us for 4 weeks (in April 2009) to breathe life into our infamous arsenic generator. It was build by our machine shop a while ago and has since been waiting to produce yellow arsenic for uranium chemistry. We are happy to have Alistair in town and are looking forward to lots of chemistry and camaraderie!

Congratulations to Radim who has been awarded the 2008 Research Award For Young European Scientists of The European Society for Quantum Solar Energy Conversion for the best PhD thesis in the field of quantum solar energy conversion.
www.esqsec.unibe.ch/award08.htm

Radim during his award lecture at the Quantsol 2009 Winterworkshop in Rauris (Austria).

On Feb. 22-24, the 5th annual meeting for coordination chemists “Koordinationschemie-Treffen 2009” was hosted by our group here in Erlangen. We were happy to welcome more than one hundred participants from 35 research groups from all around Germany. It has become a well-established tradition that all presentations are given and chaired by graduate students. The 33 exciting talks and 23 posters showcased results from the forefront of coordination chemistry, with topics ranging from small molecule activation, through precursors for modified ceramics, to photoactive complexes for sunlight-driven hydrogen production. On Monday evening, we celebrated with a “Rosenmontag Buffet” where delicious traditional meals were served accompanied by plenty of local Franconian beer. The next “Koordinationschemie-Treffen 2010” will be organized by Prof. Eva Rentschler and Prof. Katja Heinze in Mainz.
more pictures get it here

Boris received his Diploma from University of Regensburg (with Prof. Göpferich/PD Teßmar) and joined our group in January 2009. He will work on a project continuing our efforts in uranium coordination chemistry.

Martina, a Dipl.-Chem. from TU München (with Prof. Herrmann/Dr. Schneider) will work on the catalytic activation of CO2 at reactive Ti and Fe complexes. She will start her studies with us in May 2009.

We would like to welcome our new international guest-scientist, Jesús Rodríguez Ruiz. Jesús recieved his Diploma from Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (Spain) and now he is pursuing his PhD degree at Università degli Studi di Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy). He will stay with us for three months (January-March 2009) working with Radim on photoelectrochemistry of semiconductor electrodes.

Congratulations to Paschalis Thasitis for finishing his Diploma thesis! Much to our regret, Paschalis is leaving us again, since he has accepted a very attractive job offer at a company back in is home country Greece in January 2009. For his efforts and hard work during his time in the Meyer lab, he was awarded a “Diploma hat”! Good luck for the future and we hope to see you again soon!

Congratulations to Prof. Daniel Mindiola who was awarded the prestigious “Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award” awarded by Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2009). It will allow him to visit Germany for an extended research stay. During this visit he will split his time and perform experiments in the laboratories of Prof. Herbert Roesky at the University of Göttingen as well as our laboratory at Erlangen. We are looking forward to host this truly amazing synthetic chemist, learn from him and have lots of fun with him and his family.

Christina’s former supervisor at the University of California, San Diego, Prof. Roger Y. Tsien, was awarded this year’s (2008) Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He is sharing the award with Prof. Martin Chalfie (Columbia) and Dr. Osamu Shimomura (Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole). Congratulations to Roger from the Meyer Group!

On the occasion of his retirement, Prof. H. Kisch – one of our much respected Senior Colleagues – was honored during the “Festkolloquium – Katalyse mit und ohne Licht” in October 2008. About ~100 international guests joined the festivities in celebration of his very successful research career (see photo left with Prof. Schrauzer, UCSD (left), Profs. Braslavsky (left) Wilke & Wieghardt (right), MPI Mühlheim, photo right with Profs. Herberhold (left), Wilke (middle), and Vahrenkamp). Thank you Prof. Kisch for 25 years of committed service at the University of Erlangen!

Welcome to Prof. Dr. Sven Rau! We are pleased to announce that Dr. Sven Rau accepted the recently offered position as a W2 Professor (Nachfolge Prof. Kisch) at the “Institut für Anorganische und Allgemeine Chemie”. In October 2008, he and his group from the University of Jena decided to join our team in Erlangen and we are looking forward to many years of science, collaborations and friendship!

This was a first!!! The Meyer group participated in the “Iron Chemist” (Sept. 2008) competition here at the University of Erlangen. Although we nominated two teams (team U238 and Fe57) for the triathlon competition, we unfortunately were not quite as physically “fit” as some of the other teams and had to resort to our famous team spirit and sportsmanship to nevertheless enjoy the competition. This sportsmanship is clearly demonstrated in the picture below in which Dr. Jörg Sutter and Prof. Sven Rau are shaking hands as they pass the finish line at the same time! Well done guys!

We are very much looking forward to welcome Prof. Daniel Mindiola (Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA) for a short visit to Erlangen. Dan will be studying some of his complexes by EPR spectroscopy and SQUID magnitization. Everybody is welcome to meet Dan in his temporary office on the 3rd floor (Room A3.19; Tel.: 27362). He will be here from July 13-16, 2008.

Where are they now? It is with great pleasure to note that post doc Suzanne Doucette continues her academic endeavors. Suzanne has taken an assistant professor position at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana (July 2008). We wish her the very best and success!

Tuesday, May 13th 2008 was Erlangen day at the local Bergkirchweih festival, and our group joined the rest of the city in hoisting a mug. Below is a picture of the group at the Steinbach Bräu keller. You can see more pictures in the photo gallery.

Dr. Sandro Gambarotta from the University of Ottawa, Canada will be giving a seminar on Monday, May 26th 2008 entitled "Highly Reactive Low-valent Synthons of f-block Elements: The 'Vandals' of the Periodic Table".

Also joining us in May is Dr. Peter Wolczanski from Cornell Univeristy in Ithaca, New York. He will be giving a seminars on Tuesday at 5:15 about "Investigations of Group 6 Silox Compounds: Some Consequences of Orbital
Symmetry", and another on Friday, May 30th on "Consequences of Orbital Symmetry in Group 5 and Some Past Chemistry".

Dr. Cliff Kubiak from the University of California, San Diego campus will be visiting us from Friday, May 4th until Friday, May 24th 2008. He will be giving a seminar entitled "Inorganic Mixed Valency at the Delocalized/Localized Borderline: Ultrafast, Non-Arrhenius, and Solvent-Coupled Electron Transfers" on Thursday, May 15th, and a second lecture on Monday, May 19th entitled "The Catalytic Chemistry of Carbon Dioxide Conversion".

Guests Cliff Kubiak (left) and Peter Wolczanski (2nd from left) with past visitors Christopher Cummins (3rd from right) and Paul Chirik (2nd from right).

University of California, San Diego Professor Dr. Michael Sailor will be joining us from Wednesday, March 18th to Friday, March 21st 2008.

Congratulations to PhD student Oanh Lam on her first primary-author publication entitled "Charge-Separation in Uranium Diazomethane Complexes Leading to C-H Activation and Chemical Transformation" (02/2008). The JACS paper summarizes her work on C─H activation of diphenyldiazomethane using a low-valent U(III) complex. Read the full paper. It is also being highlighted in the online technology journal Ars Technica.

We would like to welcome our newest international group member, PhD candidate Xinjiao Wang. Xinjiao recieved her undergraduate degree in China, and M.S. in Singapore. She will be working on catalytic applications of nickel complexes.

Congratulations to PhD student Carola Vogel on her first publication entitled "An Iron Nitride Complex". This Angewandte Chemie paper summarizes her work on the synthesis of discrete iron nitride complexes stabilized by N-anchored tris(carbene) ligands. Read the full paper. A discussion of the paper was published in Science Editor's Choice (here).

Michigan State University professor Dr. Mitch Smith will be joining us on Friday, November 9th. He will be giving a seminar on Monday the 12th at 4 pm entitled "Iridium Boryl Complexes: Versatile Tools for Functionalizing CH Bonds".

The solar energy workshop was a resounding success! Students from across Germany and Professors from around the world were in attendance for the first Erlangen workshop on "Chemical Solar Energy Conversion via Redox-Active Metal Centers".

Where are they now? Well, it is with great pleasure to note that the founding members of the Meyer group, Ingrid and Xile, continue their academic endeavors. After their postdoctoral research stays at the University of California, Berkley, and the California Institute of Technology, Ingrid and Xile started their independent careers at the California Maritime Academy and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. We wish them all the very best and success!

This year, we are glad to announce the newly established workshop “Chemical Solar Energy Conversion via Redox-Active Metal Centers“ at our university (Sept. 24-27, 2007) sponsored by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The main objective of this first workshop is an introduction to the field of solar energy conversion via electron transfer reactions. The emphasis is placed on the activation and, ultimately, cleavage of water to oxygen and hydrogen, utilizing sunlight as clean, renewable, and abundant source of energy. We are proud to have two speakers that are leaders in the field of homogeneous and heterogeneous approaches to water splitting. Professors A. Kudo and D. G. Nocera will be presenting current challenges, advances, and perspectives in chemical solar energy conversion.

Prof. Jeffrey Long (University of California, Berkeley) is visiting us October 4 – 7. Jeff will present a seminar, titled "Hydrogen Storage in Microporous Coordination Solids with Exposed Metal Sites", on Friday, October 5, at 11:15 AM (Lecture Room H2). Everyone is welcome to join!

Prof. Timothy Warren is coming to visit the Meyer Group for his sabbatical leave from Georgetown University (Washington DC, USA). Tim and his family will arrive on August 29. He will be joined by two students who will focus on spectroscopic and computational experiments. Tim will present his research in a number of seminars throughout his stay (tba). We are looking forward to having Tim!

Dr. David L. Clark (Director G.T. Seaborg Institute, Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, USA) is coming to visit the Meyer laboratories on August 29. Dave will give a seminar on "Research at a US National Laboratory: Current Topics in Actinide Research" at 5 PM.

Our first five laboratories have been fully renovated! New power, cooling water, central regeneration and inert gas lines have been installed as well as new lab furniture and state of the art inert gas glove boxes.

Single and double station glove boxes are equipped with -35 deg C freezers, liquid nitrogen dewars, and O2 sensors. All double-station boxes have feedthroughs for vacuum and special gas lines, allow for attachment of electrochemical equipment as well as cryostats. Quartz glass light guides and dip-probes permit acquisition of electronic absorption spectra inside the glove boxes under controlled atmospheres.

A brand new solvent purification system (Glasscontour by George & Allison Meyer, Irvine, CA) for 10 solvents has been installed! This system provides bone-dry and pristine solvents. Standard hydrocarbon solvents such as C5, C6, benzene and toluene as well as more problematic solvents like Et2O, THF, CH2Cl2, CHCl3, CH3CN and pyridine can be obtained dry and oxygen-free.

Congratulations to Suzanne! Suzanne has been awarded the prestigeous Alexander-von-Humboldt fellowship for her postdoctoral studies concerning the coordination chemistry of reactive uranium complexes.

Dr. Suzanne Doucette (here with her husband Jarrod) has joined our group for her postdoctoral research. Suzanne comes from Paul Chirik's group @ Cornell University. She will study the coordination, activation, and functionalization of alkanes and CO2 at reactive, electron-rich uranium complexes in molecularly-engineered ligand environments.

Please welcome our first co-workers! Thomas Wagner (left) and Carola Vogel (right) have joined our group for her diploma studies (...and more).

Our laboratory has moved to germany (see coordinates below)! The US DOE funded actinide group will partly remain @ ucsd and co-advised with prof. joe o'connor:

meyer lab
professor of chemistry
institute of inorganic & general chemistry (chair)
friedrich-alexander university erlangen - nuremberg
egerlandstrasse 1
erlangen, bavaria 91080

email: kmeyer@chemie.uni-erlangen.de
office: +49 (0)9131 8527361 (asst)
office: +49 (0)9131 8527360
fax: +49 (0)9131 8527367

On August First Twothousendandfive Ingrid Castro-Rodriguez defended her PhD thesis. The heartiest congratulations to Dr. Ingrid Castro-Rodriguez! Ingrid graduated in a little less than five years with more than 14 publications! For her very impressive research accomplishments, Ingrid has received multiple awards and recognitions such as UCSD's Teddy Trailor Award, the Gordon Research Conference's Carl Storm Fellowship, and a Bavarian Science Foundation Research Fellowship that brought her to the Technical University of Munich (Germany). Also, a Glenn T. Seaborg Summer Fellowship allowed Ingrid to conduct research at the Los Alamos National Laboratories. Ingrid will be continuing to do postdoctoral research with Prof. Kenneth Raymond at UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. For her research proposal at Cal, Ingrid has been awarded the prestigious Glenn T. Seaborg Postdoctoral Fellowship. Awesome, Ingrid!!! All the very best & good luck for the future!

Congratulations to Patrick Feng! Patrick has been awarded a prestigious NSF graduate research fellowship!!!

NSF's Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in the relevant science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees. NSF Fellows are expected to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering.

Ingrid, Oanh and Patrick went to the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) to collect our first XANES and XAFS data on our uranium complexes. This study is carried out in collaboration with Dr. Steve Conradson and Dr. Dave Clark from the Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) and funded through the UCSD/LANL CARE Program (CARE).

Oanh did her undergraduate research with Prof. Jim Mayer at the University of Washington, Seattle. She will continue her synthetic chemistry in our uranium laboratory. Carmen has studied in the laboratories of Prof. Raphael Raptis at the University of Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras Campus) and is currently synthesizing new NHC chelators for our transition metal chemistry. Patrick, who did his undergraduate work with Prof. Peter Dorhout at Colorado State University, will also work on our uranium chemistry.

We finally had to say "Good-Bye" to Xile. Xile started working in the laboratories of Prof. Jonas Peters at Caltech. His new email address is xhu@caltech.edu

Ingrid is back from Munich! She sends hugs & kisses to the Tamm group and everybody else, who treated her like a princess! Ingrid says: "I love Germany, German food, and the Germans." Well...one can clearly see.

The first meyer-group student defended his PhD on November Eighteenth Twothousendandfour. The heartiest congratulations to Dr. Xile Hu. Xile...sorry, Dr. Hu graduated in four years with 10 publications. Xile will be continuing to do postdoctoral research with Prof. Jonas Peters at the California Institute of technology. All the best & good luck for the future!

Congratulations to Ingrid! Ingrid has received a research fellowship from the Bavarian Science Foundation. Ingrid is currently working in the laboratories of Prof. Matthias Tamm at the Technical University Munich (TUM) in Germany. Ingrid will stay in Bavaria during the holidays. We wish her all the best...and may be some snow (which Ingrid has never seen before;=) Come back soon!

Congratulations to Ingrid! Ingrid has received UCSD's Teddy G. Traylor Award for the Chemical Sciences.