ChemSysCon Team at Freie Universität Berlin Receives Prestigious Werner Siemens Foundation Research Award

Winning projects receive grants worth one million Swiss francs / ChemSysCon also among the top finalists for "Project of the Century" competition. Photo of Professor Sebastian Hasenstab-Riedel Image Credit: Professor Sebastian Hasenstab-Riedel The Werner Siemens Foundation (WSS) has awarded the acclaimed chemist Professor Sebastian Hasenstab-Riedel at Freie Universität Berlin and his team a WSS Research Prize worth one million Swiss francs (1.017 million euros). The grant is intended to help researchers develop and establish innovative technologies to use resources more sustainably. Within the ChemSysCon project, scientists from Freie Universität Berlin (Hasenstab-Riedel, Timm John, and Rainer Haag) - together with colleagues from the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (Franziska Emmerling) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research (Alexander Böker) - want to develop new chemical systems to convert sustainable resources. The ChemSysCon project is one of six projects from the German-speaking world to be selected for the WSS Research Prizes out of 123 proposals. "The sheer diversity and quality of these research proposals and the enthusiasm, innovation, optimism, and willingness to take risks we saw in the projects really impressed us," says Professor Matthias Kleiner, former president of the German Research Foundation and the Leibniz Association, and long-term member of the Werner Siemens Foundation's scientific advisory board. The award ceremony will take place in Lucerne, Switzerland on June 16.