The CRC1459 Start-Up project proposals will support innovative interdisciplinary projects supervised by habilitation candidates or junior professors for one year starting in January 2024 to promote independent careers of junior researchers and catalyse their integration in the CRC 1459.
This years winners are Line Næsborg and Iris Niehues and their profiles and projects are summarized below:
Line Næsborg studied medicinal chemistry at Aarhus University, Denmark, where she also completed her PhD in the group of Karl Anker Jørgensen in 2018. After her doctoral work, Line moved to Technical University Munich to undertake postdoctoral studies on photochemical cascade reactions towards complex carbon skeletons and their application in total sythesis in the lab of Thorsten Bach. In 2020 she started her independent career as a group leader in the Organic Chemistry Institute at Münster University. Starting in 2024, she will join the CRC1459 as one of the junior group leaders working on the following Start-Up project:
Homeostasis is a key feature for living things to survive and parameters such as temperature, pH, blood pressure and sugar levels are controlled this way. Based on this concept, we aim to establish self-regulating photochemical reactivity. The proposed concept will contain a feedback system enabling the homeostasis of photochemical reactivity. Therefore, the material would show a conditioned response and adaptive behavior. The project will be investigated in collaboration with Prof. Björn Braunschweig.
Iris Niehues studied physics at the University of Münster from 2010 until 2015, where she also completed her doctoral studies in 2020 in the group of Rudolf Bratschitsch. In her thesis, which was awarded with the department's doctoral prize, she studied the optical properties of atomically thin semiconductors under strain. In May 2021, Iris Niehues started her postdoct in Rainer Hillenbrand's working group at the nanoGUNE Institute in San Sebastián, Spain. Her project, funded by the DFG´s Walter Benjamin Fellowship , dealt with the investigation of single photon emitters using special near-field microscopy techniques. Since December 2023, Iris is back at the Institute of Physics at the University of Münster as a junior professor in her junior research group funded by the NRW Return Program. Starting in 2024, she will join the CRC1459 as one of the junior group leaders working on the following Start-Up project:
Single-photon emitters (SPEs) with unique quantum properties present an intriguing opportunity for intelligent material development. It is known that environment has a large influence on SPEs recently found in 2D materials.
This project aims to explore the potential of intelligent matter using SPEs, merging quantum optical properties with material science. The goal is to advance quantum technology by making SPEs adaptive to external stimuli to achieve nanoscale single-photon emission control.