Dr. Henrik Junge and Dr. Kathrin Junge from the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis Germany, visited the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences from September 15 to 17. During their visit, they each delivered a lecture entitled “Sustainable Fuels from Renewable Energies” and “Iron-catalyzed reductions as synthetic toolbox” respectively.

In his lecture entitled “Sustainable Fuels from Renewable Energies”, Dr. Henrik Junge introduced his group’s work on methanol, alcohol and other small molecules catalyzed hydrogenation, preparation of methanoic acid through catalytic hydrogenation of carbon dioxide, and the application of the above work.

In her lecture entitled “Iron-catalyzed reductions as synthetic toolbox”, Dr. Kathrin Junge focused on the preparation, characterization, reaction performance and reaction mechanism of homogeneous non-noble metal catalysts used in the preparation of alcohols compounds through carbonyl compounds catalyzed hydrogenation.

Introduction to Dr. Henrik Junge:

Dr. Henrik Junge studied chemistry at the University of Rostock, Germany, where he completed his PhD thesis in the field of Organosilicon chemistry in 1995 in the group of Prof. Popowski. From 1995 to 1998 he spent three years in the group of Prof. Dr. G. Oehme at the Institute for Organocatalytic Research in Rostock, before he joint the group of Prof. Dr. M. Beller at the same institute in 1999. From 2000 to 2002 Junge was an employee of the Institute for agricultural Investigations and Research in Rostock. Since 2002 he worked there as the deputy leader of the department for analytics of environmental and biological active substances. In 2003 Junge relocated to the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis as a Project Leader, since 2009 he is there the Group Leader for “Catalysis for Energy”. From 2008 to 2014 Junge was the Chairman of the managing committee of the Hydrogen Technology Initiative Mecklenburg-Western Pommerania. Scientific and technical experiences of Junge are especially homogeneous catalysis, organometallic chemistry, catalytic dehydrogenation and fuel cell catalysts.

Introduction to Dr. Kathrin Junge:

Dr. Kathrin Junge, born in 1967 in northern Germany, received her PhD degree in Chemistry from the University of Rostock in 1997 working with Prof. E. Popowski. After a postdoctoral position in the Max-Planck group of Uwe Rosenthal, she joined the group led by Matthias Beller in 2000. Since 2008 she has been the group leader for homogeneous redox catalysis at LIKAT. Her scientific work has been published in > 130 articles. She has been involved for years in catalysis research, where she has developed efficient catalytic hydrogenations for ketoesters and for other carbonyl compounds including carboxylic acid derivatives. Moreover, she created several new ligands, especially for hydrogenation reactions. Her current main interest is the development of environmentally benign and efficient catalytic reactions based on inexpensive, non-precious metals.

Dr. Henrik Junge is giving a lecture.

 Dr. Kathrin Junge is giving a lecture.