ISC News

As part of this year’s Girls’ Day on April 23, 2026, 32 girls aged 10 to 15 visited the Fritz Haber Institute and gained insight into the diverse work carried out in the research groups and workshops through hands-on experiments and craft projects. more

With the aim to precisely understand its function, researchers from the Inorganic Chemistry Department and Interface Science Department of the Fritz Haber Institute, together with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion investigated the Cu/ZnO/Al₂O₃ catalyst system used for industrial methanol production during reaction conditions. They found that the dynamic, temperature-sensitive nature of the Cu-ZnO interaction is the key to its function – opening up new avenues for rationally improving this process. more

The “Premio Investigación” (Research Award) is annually presented to outstanding scientists in any field whose work is having a global impact extending further from their own scientific discipline. For the year 2025, the prestigious award goes to Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldan Cuenya, director of the Department of Interface Science at the Fritz Haber Institute, whose groundbreaking research on catalysts for renewable energy-based applications is making a contribution to reducing dependence on fossil fuels. more

Dr. Jiajie Hou from the Interface Science Department of the Fritz Haber Institute has been awarded a prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship for her research project “oCEMBER2mc” that aims to investigate strategies for converting captured carbon dioxide into valuable chemicals. more

Yujie Peng defended her doctoral thesis at Technische Universität Berlin. She elucidated how surface structure, local chemical environment, and applied potential govern the in situ activation and structural evolution of copper- and cobalt-based electrocatalysts. more

Researchers from the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society have unveiled fundamental new insights into the working principles of fuel-cell catalysts. Their study, published in Nature Communications, reveals how multiple steps during the conversion of oxygen (O₂) to water (H₂O) give rise to the overall catalyst kinetics, and how this is related to changes at the catalyst-solution interface. The study constitutes a profound step forward in our understanding of multi-step electrocatalytic reactions. more

Dr. Chenyue Qiu has been awarded a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdocs. Supported by the prestigious fellowship, she recently started working in the electron microscopy group of Dr. See Wee Chee in the Interface Science Department at the Fritz Haber Institute. more

Researchers from the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society (FHI) have uncovered how carbonate molecules affect the conversion of CO₂ into valuable fuels on gold electrocatalysts. Their findings reveal key molecular mechanisms in CO₂ electrocatalysis and hydrogen evolution, pointing to new strategies for improving energy efficiency and reaction selectivity. more

Four scientists from the Fritz Haber Institute are on the list of Highly Cited Researchers 2025 published by Clarivate Analytics: the Director of the Interface Science Department, Prof. Beatriz Roldán Cuenya; two group leaders of the same Department, Dr. Janis Timoshenko and Dr. Arno Bergmann, and former Director Prof. Robert Schlögl. This result underscores the FHI’s internationally leading role in physics, chemistry, and materials science. more

Antonia Herzog, who completed her PhD in the Interface Science department in 2023, has been appointed as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) after two years of postdoctoral studies at MIT. With her success story, the young scientist is encouraging women in science to pursue an academic career. more

The Fritz Haber Institute is very pleased to welcome Prof. Tanja Cuk from the University of Colorado Boulder for a research stay at the institute as part of her Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award. The internationally renowned spectroscopist will be hosted by the departments of Prof. Beatriz Roldan Cuenya and Prof. Martin Wolf from August to December 2025. more

At the Annual Meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE) in Mainz in September 2025, Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldan Cuenya, our Managing Director and Director of the Interface Science Department, was ceremonially inducted into the ranks of ISE Fellows.  more