Mercator Fellowship at Technical University in Germany Renewed
Chemistry professor Markus Hoffmann has been a guest researcher as a Mercator Fellow at Technical University Darmstadt (TU-Darmstadt) since 2015. Funding for the research project and the associated Mercator Fellowship has been renewed for a second time.
The German funding agency Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) recently approved the second continuation of the research project “Characterization of the Properties and Phase Behavior of nonionic surfactants confined in mesoporous silica materials employing solid state NMR techniques” led by Professor Buntkowsky and Gutmann at TU Darmstadt, Germany.
The project has been ongoing since 2015 and its new 365,567.00 Euro budget includes support for Physical Chemistry Professor Hoffmann as a Mercator Follow to participate in the research project as a guest researcher. The research seeks to develop a better understanding of nonionic surfactants, which are promising benign solvents in chemical synthesis, when they reside within the pores of high surface catalyst support material. Under such conditions of spatial confinement, solvents may behave very differently because of the present interactions with the pore surface.
The collaborative research project has been very productive thus far leading to 16 peer-reviewed publications with more to come. Hoffmann is seeking renewed funding from the National Science Foundation, which has allowed SUNY Brockport undergraduate students to join him in this research. During the summer of 2023, chemistry/biochemistry majors Mandy Huynh, Kashane Miller, and Anthony Gonzales participated in the research project. They plan to present their findings at various undergraduate research venues during the upcoming academic year and help Hoffmann publish their results.