CGSC 5th Phd Symposium

The annual PhD Symposium of the Cologne Graduate School of Chemistry (CGSC), Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Cologne took place on 23rd May 2023 this year. It brought together all the graduates from the CGSC. A central event of the PhD symposium is the Poster session for the graduates. It presents an excellent opportunity for those PhD students who have finished first year of research work, to present their PhD projects.

Forty-eight such projects from different research areas in Chemistry viz. theory, materials, structure, catalysis, life-science and synthesis were presented, using excellently designed posters. A new category of poster - Transfer, was included this year with the view to spread awareness among the researchers on knowledge and technology transfer. The transferscouts of the faculty,Dr. Isabelle Schiffer, Ph.D and Dr. Dadhichi Paretkar supported by the Gateway Excellence Start-up Center University of Cologne presented this poster at the poster session. PhD candidates and post-docs who attended the poster-session were curious about the relatively ‘new’ body of services that transferscouts offer to help an innovators' journey from research to application.

Every year, three poster prizes are allocated from the graduate school, judged by junior group leaders. This year together with the transfer officer of the faculty, Prof. Annette Schmidt and Dr. Heike Henneken, who co-ordinates the graduate school, the transferscouts introduced a new prize for the poster with best innovation potential. The independent jury for this prize consisted of the transferscouts and Dr. Piotr Jakubowicz, a chemist by training and protoyping expert at the Gateway ESC. With the different innovations in the life science, material science and synthesis techniques it was a difficult task to narrow down to one poster. The most enriching part for the transferscouts of being the jury was tp get to know different PhD projects and the person behind the work, feel their energy and motivation in bringing forth excellence science at the University of Cologne . The jury selected two posters, one from life science and another from material science . We congratulate Ms. Niusha Heshmati and Mr. Nachiket Pathak for wining the prize for the poster with best innovation potential. We sincerely thank Prof. Jan Riemer , Speaker of the Graduate School and Dr. Heike Henneken for giving us an excellent opportunity to interact with graduates on knowledge transfer and to the PhD candidates of the department of chemistry for insightful talks on excellent science.