Humboldt Research Award Winner at the NETZ
Particles out of the flame
- von Birte Vierjahn
- 20.05.2019
To improve car engines, produce nanomaterials or design rocket engines, it is essential to understand combustion processes. Professor Hai Wang from Stanford University (USA) is an expert in this field. As a winner of the prestigious Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he is currently a guest researcher at the NanoEnergieTechnikZentrum (NETZ) of the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE).
Hai Wang, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the renowned university in the Silicon Valley, has been collaborating with his German colleagues for several years. The Humboldt Research Award now enables him to spend around six months in Duisburg to directly cooperate with them in the NETZ. He is looking forward to the collaboration: „Professor Schulz is making dazzling advances in understanding and making advanced materials from gas-phase synthesis. His research group is leading in many aspects of this research field in the world. Therefore I am extremely delighted to have the opportunity to work with him and I hope that our collaboration will produce impactful results for years to come.”
Wang is internationally known for his work in combustion and aerosol research, especially in the fields of soot formation, reaction modeling and nanomaterials synthesis. He has been a key contributor to energy research and development, both for basic research and for industrial applications. His current research interests include the production of nanomaterials in flames. He has recently succeeded in processing the emerging carbon nanoparticles into nanodiamonds that are used widely: From fluorescent marking in medical applications to LEDs with variable colors.
The collaboration with Professor Schulz's group focuses primarily on basic research: "We are working on a unified theory on the behavior of nanoparticles in different precursors and settings during synthesis. In the long term, we want to be able to define exactly which products we will receive at the end of the process, even before we start it”, Schulz explains.
The Humboldt Research Award is granted to foreign scientists of all disciplines for their achievements as a whole, which have had a lasting impact on their own discipline and which are expected to contribute to future excellence. The award is valued at 60,000 € and enables the prizewinners to carry out research projects in Germany with peers of their own choice.
Further information: Prof. Christof Schulz, Reactive Fluids (IVG), +49 203 37 9-8161, christof.schulz@uni-due.de
Editor: Birte Vierjahn, +49 203 37 9-8176,birte.vierjahn@uni-due.de