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Thursday, 21 October, 2021

Postdoctoral Researchers receive CeNS Young Investigator Fund

To promote the scientific independence of postdoctoral researchers, CeNS has launched the CeNS Young Investigator Fund. The CeNS Young Investigator Fund comes with up to €10.000 to support the postdocs’ own research projects. From all nominations, the CeNS board selected five recipients based on the innovative and creative nature and the interdisciplinary character of their work, as well as the potential shown by the candidate as a future leader in nanoscience.

Dr. Viktorija Glembockyte has been a postdoc in the group of Prof. Tinnefeld for 3 years and she is transitioning to establish her own junior research group. Her research focuses on the development of fluorescence-based diagnostic assays based on plasmonic DNA origami nanoantennas, succeeding in detecting single DNA molecules that can indicate antibiotic resistance on a battery-powered smartphone microscope. In addition, Dr. Glembockyte is building her own network, collaborating among others with the groups of Oliver Thorn-Seshold, Prof. Thorben Cordes, and Amelie Heuer-Jungemann.

Dr. Martin Reynders is a postdoctoral researcher in chemical biology and biophysics in the group of Dr. Oliver Thorn-Seshold. Despite his early career stage, he has acquired years of practical experience from project design to synthetic chemistry, cell biology, biochemistry, and even optics/electronics. This experience now puts him in an ideal position to build interdisciplinary projects, with the broader vision is to direct the generation of new tools and therapeutics based on smart molecules that mimic and surpass the abilities of enzymes. Dr. Reynders recently secured his first independent grant to create bifunctional, photocontrolled protein-phosphorylating reagents, which has never been done before.

Dr. Jenny Schneider has been working in the group of Prof. Thomas Bein since 2020, after gaining international experience at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Her research is focused on the understanding of the mechanistic steps involved into green fuels generation via solar-to-chemical energy conversion. For example, Dr. Schneider has developed a smart design of the electrode/molecule interface that allows for the identification of the parameters affecting the light induced interfacial electron transfer kinetics and (photo)catalysis.

Dr. Ana Sousa Castillo gained international experience and visibility, working in many different groups and countries around the world, before joining the group of Prof. Emiliano Cortés at LMU. She is currently developing and tuning hybrid nanomaterials to enhance the efficiency with which sunlight can be converted into chemical energy and fuels. In the field of nanomaterials for energy conversion, Dr. Sousa Castillo is a very talented scientist who combines a solid experimental background with impressive creativity and the ability to promptly grasp new ideas and approaches.

Dr. Juan Wang joined the group of Dr. Andreas Tittl in 2020. Since then, she has developed and started a new research direction within the group to overcome the application limits of current nanophotonic biosensors. Specifically, she is working to combine a unique nanophotonic approach (top-down all-dielectric metasurfaces united with bottom-up metallic nanoparticles) with microfluidic technology, enabling an entirely new class of on-chip sensor devices with strong diagnostics and clinical applications. This constitutes an exciting new direction in point-of-care sensing, highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of her research at the intersection of nanoscale physics and biotechnology/medicine.