Gerhard Ertl Lecture & Award

The Ertl Lecture Award was established in 2008 by the three Berlin universities (Humboldt University, Technical University and Free University) and the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society and is awarded once a year. It commemorates former FHI Director Gerhard Ertl's Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which he received in 2007. The prize honours outstanding personalities and researchers in the field of catalysis where Ertl carried out exceptional research for many decades. The prize, sponsored by BASF, includes a one-week research stay at the participating Berlin institutions and a keynote lecture. The winner is typically announced in Spring, the lecture takes place around the December 10th, the anniversary of Ertl's Nobel Prize reception.

FHI Library Workshop: Databases

• Date: May 11, 2022
• Time: 11:00 AM (Local Time Germany)
• Speaker: Mathis Jäger
• FHI Library, Student Assistant
• Location: FHI library (building A)
• Host: FHI Library
• Contact: library@fhi-berlin.mpg.de

Our workshop will help you to select and apply the most appropriate resources and tools for your research. Learn more on how to quickly find and analyze relevant scientific literature. The two databases Web of Science and SciFinder will be presented and discussed in detail. More details on how to join the workshop will be announced by e-mail or contact the library team.

FHI Library Workshop: Open Access & Information Resources

• Date: Jun 23, 2022
• Time: 02:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
• Speaker: Mathis Jäger
• FHI Library, Student Assistant
• Location: FHI library (building A)
• Host: FHI Library
• Contact: library@fhi-berlin.mpg.de

This interactive workshop will introduce available options for making your research outputs open access. Discover which publishing fees are paid centrally or by the FHI library and get practical tips on how to adopt open access practices in your research area. Furthermore, you will get an overview of useful search tools. More details on how to join the workshop will be announced by e-mail or contact the library team.

Synthesis planning, mechanistic analysis and discovery of new reaction classes in the age of computers

• ISC and TH Seminar
• Date: Dec 1, 2023
• Time: 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM (Local Time Germany)
• Speaker: Bartosz A. Grzybowski
• Bartosz A. Grzybowski is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at UNIST and a Director of the IBS Center for Algorithmic and Robotized Synthesis (CARS). He is also Professor at the Institute of Organic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences. Although he has spent a large fraction of his research career on esoteric problems of self-assembly and non-equilibrium systems, he considers his most impactful discoveries to be in the area of computer-driven synthesis (e.g., the Chematica/Synthia and Allchemy programs).
• Location: FHI library (building A)
• Host: ISC and TH Department

After decades of rather unsuccessful attempts, computers are finally making impact on the practice of synthetic chemistry. This change is made possible by the combination of increased computing power and, above all, new algorithms to encode and manipulate synthetic knowledge at various levels, from sequences of full reactions to sequences of mechanistic steps. In my talk, I will illustrate how these advances have enabled completely autonomous planning of multistep syntheses of complex (natural product) targets, how they allow us to elucidate complex reaction mechanisms and, above all, discover new classes of reactions. [more]

Molecular Simulation in the Age of AI

• ISC and TH Seminar
• Date: Dec 13, 2023
• Time: 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM (Local Time Germany)
• Speaker: Dr. Edward Pyzer-Knapp
• Head of Research Innovation for UK and Ireland at IBM, Visiting Professor of Industrially Applied AI at the University of Liverpool, and the Editor in Chief for Applied AI Letters.
• Location: FHI library (building A)
• Host: ISC and TH Department

The history of chemical discovery has been punctuated by computational and theoretical developments. Evolving from empirical observation, increasingly systematised experimentation allowed for the development of theoretical underpinnings, which in turn afforded the paradigm shifting application of computational techniques, which has since co-evolved with the development of the technologies upon which they are run. Recent years have seen the emergence of data-driven techniques and technologies for building powerful models, appearing to enable us to side-step the requirement for expensive physical simulations – replacing them with highly performant, but black-box alternatives. [more]