Cutting-edge research
More than 160 guests from science, industry and politics came together to celebrate RESOLV and look back on 10 successful years of Solvation Science. Top international researchers from all over the world, including Cambridge, ENS, Yale, UC Berkeley and others, reported on their current research results. A very special highlight of the event was the lecture by the Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2021, Benjamin List, one of the Principal Investigators of RESOLV.
Structural changes through excellent science
How the Cluster of Excellence shapes structures both in the universities but also in the region as a whole was the subject of a panel discussion among representatives from politics and university management. On stage, the rectors of Ruhr University Bochum and TU Dortmund University Martin Paul and Manfred Bayer discussed together with the former ministers of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia Stefan Holthoff-Pförtner and Isabel Pfeifer-Poensgen as well as the managing director of Business Metropole Ruhr Julia Frohne. It was emphasized that the Cluster of Excellence is not only a hotspot for outstanding research, it has attracted high reputation researchers from all over the world to the Ruhr Area. The increase in reputation reflects on the entire University Alliance Ruhr and drives the structural change and innovation in such an economical important area as chemical industry.
Time travel via Space Ship
In the end, speaker Martina Havenith gave an entertaining lecture, which sent the participants on a time travel through the last 10 years. Similar to a well-known spaceship, enterprisem RESOLV set out with a small team "to go where no one has gone before". The mission was to explore new scientific challenges, and seek out for the input and support of the best researchers in the Ruhr Area. In 2014 the sister institute California Explores Solvation (CALSOLV) at UC Berkeley, USA joined the journey, in addition to the 6 local institutes. New faculty members and new tools required the implementation of new base camps. Having established the Center for Solvation Science (ZEMOS) and new faculty at RUB in the first phase, RESOLV celebrated the topping-out ceremony at the new center of liquid phase engineering (CALEDO) at TU Dortmund in 2021. The successful research of the more than 200 RESOLV scientists over the last ten years has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Benjamin List in 2021 and 18 ERC awards. 23 out of 24 juniour groups established in RESOLV have meanwhile faculty positions. Furthermore RESOLV hosted 6 Emmy-Noether and 3 NRW return awardess. With all this in mind, Martina Havenith closed her talk with an enthusiastic look into the future: "The best it yet to come".