ISC News

Special Symposium for the 40th Anniversary of the Nobel Prize Award to
Prof. Ernst Ruska for the Invention of the Transmission Electron Microscope on
Nov. 23, 2026 at Harnack Haus Berlin.
  more

Dr. Patrick Giesbrecht has been granted a fellowship through the highly competitive Canada Postdoctoral Research Award program of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada to carry out research within the Interface Science Department at the Fritz Haber Institute. more

Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldan Cuenya, Director of the Interface Science Department at the Fritz Haber Institute, has been selected to present this year's prestigious Heilbronner-Hückel Lecture. This award entails a series of lectures in Swizerland organized jointly by the Swiss Chemical Society and the German Chemical Society. She will speak about her research at the major research universities in Switzerland. more

On June 5, Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldan Cuenya, Director of the Interface Science Department of the Fritz Haber Institute, delivered the prestigious Nanqiang Lecture at Xiamen University in China. This distinguished Named Lectureship is awarded to leading scientists worldwide to promote cutting-edge research and interdisciplinary exchange. more

In recognition of their scientific work, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation is supporting four young researchers of the Fritz Haber Institute with a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdocs: Dr. Alexander Gorfer from the Theory Department, Dr. Roey Ben David and Dr. Young Jae Kim from the Interface Science Department, and Dr. Sejun An from the Molecular Physics Department. more

As a member of the jury, Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldán Cuenya, Director of the Interface Science Department at the Fritz Haber Institute, presented this year’s Eduard Rhein Foundation Culture Award to the Swiss psychiatrist, explorer and environmental pioneer Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Bertrand Piccard. more

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