Doctorate for Philipp Grosse

Today, two doctoral students, Sebastian Kunze and Philipp Grosse, defended their doctoral theses in online disputations.

Philipp Grosse carried out research on dynamic changes in the morphology and chemical state of copper catalysts for the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide. His examination committee was chaired by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schuhmann from the Department of Chemistry of Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB). Further members were Prof. Dr. Kristina Tschulik and Prof. Dr. Martin Muhler, both from the Department of Chemistry of RUB, as well as Philipp's supervisor Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldán Cuenya from the Fritz Haber Institute (FHI) of the Max Planck Society.

Philipp Grosse joined the Roldán group in 2015 as an undergraduate student when Beatriz RoIdán was a Professor of Physics at the Ruhr-University Bochum. During her transition to the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin in 2017 and the renovation of labs at the FHI, Philipp stayed first with a large fraction of her group in Bochum for about one year and subsequently joined her in Berlin.

Philipp was successful at establishing the electrochemical operando atomic force microscopy method within the Roldán group and conducted the first in situ observation of the dynamic changes in the structure of cubic copper pre-catalysts during the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide. This work was published in Angewandte Chemie, and has been already featured in several review articles from top researchers in the field of electrochemistry.

During his PhD Philipp has published six articles in high impact peer-reviewed journals and three more have been submitted and are currently under review, one of these in Nature Communications. His combined written dissertation and oral defense were rated Summa Cum Laude.

The ISC-FHI Department congratulates Philipp for his excellent accomplishments!