---

---

27.09.2012 13:09

Ulrich Pöschl becomes director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz

Dr. Wolfgang Huisl Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie

Multiphase chemistry established as a new department at the traditional chemical institute

2012 is a big anniversary year for the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry: in addition to the centennial celebrations and the move into a new institute building there is another occasion to celebrate. On 1 October, Dr. Ulrich Pöschl will take over the newly formed Department Multiphase Chemistry. The chemist was previously a research group leader at the institute.

Pöschl is an expert on the interactions between the different phases of matter, such as solids, liquids and gases. "Examples of multiphase processes are the formation of aerosol particles, clouds, rain and snow in the atmosphere, as well as the breathing of humans and animals," states the 42-year-old scientist. “From a chemical point of view many such processes happen in our body. Molecules are exchanged between gases such as air, fluids such as blood and solid or semi-solid materials such as cell walls and membranes.” Multiphase Chemistry is a very broad field of great importance for the Earth system and climate research as well as in the life and health sciences.

The research of the new department is divided into two different areas: in earth system and climate research the focus is on the investigation of biological and organic aerosols, aerosol cloud interactions and atmosphere surface exchange processes. In the area of life and health sciences Pöschl´s group investigates how protein macromolecules change due to air pollution and how this affects allergic reactions and diseases.

The researchers will examine the reaction of multiphase processes at the molecular level and their impact on the macroscopic and global scale. The challenge is in bridging different spatial and temporal scales: from tenths of a nanometer to thousands of kilometers and from nanoseconds to years.

Since 2007, the Austrian has also been active as a university teacher in Mainz. In his new position he will continue his teaching activities in the Department of Chemistry, Pharmacy and Geosciences of the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz and the Max Planck Graduate Center. In addition, Ulrich Pöschl is successfully engaged in improving scientific communication and quality assurance: He is the founder and chief editor of the interactive open access journal “Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics” (ACP). Founded in 2001, ACP is the world's first scientific magazine with a public peer review and discussion process. It has become one of the largest and most prestigious journals in environmental and geophysical sciences. Pöschl is also chairman of the publication committee and council member of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

Curriculum vitae
Ulrich Pöschl studied chemistry at the Technical University of Graz in Austria, and received his Ph.D. in 1995 with Karl Hassler at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry on “Synthesis, Spectroscopy and Structure of selectively functionalized cyclosilanes”.
From 1996 to 1997 he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the group of Mario Molina in the field of atmospheric chemical kinetics and mass spectrometry of sulfuric acid.
In 1997 Pöschl started at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry as a researcher in the Atmospheric Chemistry Department. In the group of Paul Crutzen he worked on the photochemistry of ozone, organic trace gases and stratospheric clouds.
From 1999 to 2005 Ulrich Pöschl worked at the Institute of Hydrochemistry at the Technical University of Munich, led an independent young researcher group and qualified as a professor in chemistry with a habilitation on “Carbonaceous Aerosol Composition, Reactivity and Water Interactions”.
In 2005 he returned to the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz and headed a research group in the Department of Biogeochemistry until 2012. Since 2007 Pöschl has also taught in the Department of Chemistry, Pharmacy and Geosciences at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.
Beginning on October 1, 2012, Ulrich Pöschl will head the new department of Multiphase Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz.

Selected Publications
• Atmospheric aerosols: composition, transformation, climate and health effects, In: Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed. 44, 7520-7540, 2005.
• Kinetic model framework for aerosol and cloud surface chemistry and gas-particle interactions - Part 1: General equations, parameters, and terminology, In: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 7, 5989-6023, 2007 (with Y. Rudich and M. Ammann).
• Rainforest aerosols as biogenic nuclei of clouds and precipitation in the Amazon. In: Science 429, 1513-1516, 2010 (with ST Martin et al.).
• Multi-stage open peer review: scientific evaluation integrating the strengths of traditional peer review with the virtues of transparency and self-regulation, in: Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, DOI: 10.3389/fncom.2012.00033, 2012.

Centennial of the Kaiser Wilhelm/Max Planck Institute of Chemistry
This year, the Mainz Institute will celebrate its 100th anniversary since the precursor institution - the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin - opened its doors October 23, 1912. The Institute had to leave Berlin at the end of World War II and moved under its director at the time, Otto Hahn, to the Swabian Alb. In 1949, the Institute for Chemistry was integrated into the Max Planck Society, and has been located since then in Mainz.

Within these last 100 years the research topics of the chemists varied at least as much as their research sites: The study of plant pigments by Nobel laureate Richard Willstätter was followed by the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann in 1938/39 for which Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945. In the 1960s, the Institute was in the public spotlight due to its lunar research. And in the 1980s Paul Crutzen firmly established atmospheric chemistry as a research direction with studies of ozone degradation (for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1995). Today, the Mainz Institute focuses primarily on the chemical interactions between soil and atmosphere.

To mark the anniversary, the scientific symposium “Earth System Chemistry: Future Perspectives” and an open house day will be held on October 22, 2012 and October 28, 2012 respectively. In addition, the exhibition “Streifzüge”, which can be visited at the Institute from October 23, 2012 until the end of January 2013, will show important stages of the 100 years of the Kaiser-Wilhelm/Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. For more information, please visit: http://www.mpic.de

Contact partner
Dr. Ulrich Pöschl
Max Planck Institute for Chemistry
Phone: + 49 (0)6131/ 305-6201
E-Mail: u.poschl@mpic.de

---

<
Ulrich Pöschl, Picture: Carsten Costard

---

Merkmale dieser Pressemitteilung:
Journalisten, Wissenschaftler
Chemie, Geowissenschaften, Umwelt / Ökologie
überregional
Personalia
Englisch

---