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The year 2024 is drawing to a close. Today, we look back on ten formative events from the Helmholtz Association. Some are surprising, others encouraging and still others thought-provoking. But what they all have in common is that they were driven by talented people from all over the world who worked tirelessly at Helmholtz to push the envelope of what is possible. We have compiled 10 of these special events from the year in a retrospective review. One of them only became known a few hours before editorial deadline: the budget committee of the German Bundestag has released the funds for the construction of the new icebreaker Polarstern. It is news like this that gives us, as a research organization, confidence for the coming year. We wish you happy holidays and hope you enjoy reading! |
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Otmar Wiestler sends a Christmas message to the staff of the Helmholtz Association at the end of 2024. Watch the video message |
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If you want to find the one in a million molecules that makes perovskite solar cells particularly efficient as conductors of positive charge, you have to first produce these million molecules and test them – or you have to do what a team of researchers led by Pascal Friederich from KIT and Christoph Brabec from the Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nuremberg (HI ERN) have done. “With just 150 targeted experiments, we achieved a breakthrough that would otherwise have required hundreds of thousands of tests. The workflow we have developed opens up new possibilities for the rapid and cost-effective discovery of high-performance materials in a wide range of applications,” says Brabec. With one of the materials discovered in this way, they increased the efficiency of a reference solar cell by roughly two percent to 26.2 percent. “This success shows that a clever strategy can save an enormous amount of time and resources in the development of new energy materials,” says Friederich. From 13,000 of these molecules, the researchers then selected 101 that varied as much as possible in terms of their properties. These were automatically produced by a robotic system at HI ERN and used to make otherwise identical solar cells. The researchers then measured the efficiency of the cells. “Thanks to our highly automated synthesis platform, we were able to produce truly comparable samples and thus determine reliable efficiency values,” says Christoph Brabec, who led the work at HI ERN. In turn, the KIT researchers used the resulting efficiency values and the properties of the corresponding molecules to train an AI model. The model then suggested 48 molecules for synthesis based on two criteria: their projected high efficiency and unpredictable properties. “If the machine learning model is uncertain about predicting the efficiency, it’s worth producing the molecule to study it in more detail,” says Pascal Friederich, explaining the second criterion. “It might surprise us with a high efficiency.” Indeed, the molecules proposed by the AI could be used to build solar cells with above-average efficiency, including those that outperform other state-of-the-art materials. “We can’t be sure that we’ve really found the best one out of a million molecules, but we’re certainly close,” Friederich says. The researchers were able to follow the logic behind the AI’s suggestions to a certain extent, because the AI indicated which of the virtual molecules’ properties were most important for its suggestions. It turned out that the AI’s suggestions were also partly based on features – such as the presence of certain chemical groups like amines – that the chemists had previously paid less attention to. Christoph Brabec and Pascal Friederich are convinced that their strategy is also promising for materials research in other areas of application and can be extended to the optimization of entire components. To the KIT press release (in German)
Rapid Surge in Global Warming Mainly Due to Reduced Planetary Albedo Long COVID: SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Accumulation Linked to Long-Term Effects on the Brain |
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I find it a great gift to meet young scientists who come to me looking for career advice, help with conflicts, or personal challenges. I often learn about much more than just their research topic – the individual shines through in all their facets. My approach may be a bit unconventional, but I’m convinced that being there, listening and taking time for them helps them to find the right career path. Equally enriching is the collaboration with colleagues in talent management, whether in cross-center working groups or at career development meetings. My colleagues in the Helmholtz network share my passion for this profession, and together we approach our tasks with a lot of creativity and mutual support.
Two exciting projects come to mind: 1) To set up a cross-center career tracking program with colleagues to find out what career paths (especially non-academic ones) our graduate students and postdocs ultimately pursue, what helped them prepare for their careers, and what could be improved. 2) I would like to try a cross-over: to go on a week-long retreat with a group of young scientists and meditate together. I think it’s essential for people working on socially relevant and heatedly discussed topics like climate research to know themselves well and be in harmony with themselves.
I would like to have dinner with Teresa of Avila, a mystic, writer and reformer who lived from 1515 to 1582, and ask her how she managed to formulate her thoughts, which were quite provocative at the time, while being spared from the Inquisition. I would also like to know how she was able to found 17 monasteries, write some 25,000 letters and several books, all in a life marked by a strong connection with the divine. I believe her insights could teach us a lot about how to find and maintain inner peace in a hectic world. |
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So here we are again, the contemplative Christmas season (from the Latin religio meaning “to reflect”) and the time “between the years.” But we know that time is a tricky thing. Physically, it is quite one-dimensional. And yet it remains a mystery. As the theologian Augustine of Hippo once said about time: “If no one asks me about it, I know it. If I try to explain it to someone who asks, I don’t know.” For Newton, time was an absolute. Since Einstein, each frame of reference (Earth, the elevator, a satellite) has had its own time. But one thing is certain: time moves, and only in one direction. Thanks to Hermann von Helmholtz, we know that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed from one state to another. A journey back in time, into the past, so to speak, would violate the law of conservation of energy. So we can only go forward in time. Although there is a past and certainly a future, we only know and experience the present. According to the mathematician Hermann Minkowski, alluding to Einstein’s theory of relativity, space and time cannot be separated, which is why he speaks of space-time instead: “From now on, space and time should sink completely into the shadows, and only a kind of union of the two should retain its independence.” Interestingly, time can be physically eliminated in periodically recurring events (oscillations, rotations, orbits). The oscillations of a string pendulum, for example, can be clearly determined by the length of the string and the acceleration due to gravity alone. There are also equations in quantum mechanics where time plays no role at all, such as the time-independent Schrödinger equation. This is the cue to look back, and to look forward to the coming year: quantum theory, initiated by Planck, Einstein and Bohr, reached a historic milestone almost 100 years ago in 1925 with the advent of quantum mechanics by Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Born and others. Similar to the previously formulated theory of relativity, quantum mechanics would revolutionize our view of the world and provide the foundation for modern electronics, information and computer technologies, which are “currently” experiencing a new boost through innovations in the field of quantum materials. Key concepts such as wave-particle duality, superposition, quantization of states, the uncertainty principle and non-locality are still fresh in our minds. Driven solely by curiosity, quantum research – fundamental research par excellence – has produced astonishing results, prompting the United Nations to declare 2025 the “International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.” Throughout the year, our newsletter will feature articles on this research from the Helmholtz Association, so stay tuned! In this spirit, we wish you and all of us a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and a relaxing holiday season... |
Published by: Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, Anna-Louisa-Karsch-Str.2, 10178 Berlin Editors: Sebastian Grote, Franziska Roeder, Martin Trinkaus Photo credit: Phil Dera (Editorial) No subscription yet? Click here to register If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter, simply click here: Unsubscribe © Helmholtz
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