Science talents explore THE LÄND and CARE-O-SENE

An international group of junior researchers visited the Institute of Catalysis Research and Technology (IKFT) at KIT on 9th July 2025 as part of a scientific tour in the state of Baden-Württemberg (THE LÄND) following the Nobel Laureate Meetings in Lindau, Germany. This year’s edition of this famous meeting was dedicated to chemistry with a special focus on sustainability and circular chemistry. During the follow-up tour, the thematic focus was also placed on these urgent topics where catalytic technologies are a major driver and CARE-O-SENE serves as an ideal example.

At IKFT, a team around CARE-O-SENE PIs TT-Prof. Dr. Moritz Wolf, Prof. Dr. Jan-Dierk Grunwaldt and Dr. Anna Zimina gave some insight on the importance of catalysis for the feedstock and energy transition. The presentations, poster pitches and laboratory tour were focusing on catalyst development including DFT modelling, catalyst synthesis, shaping and testing, which are all core topics of our CRC. In the second part, the delegation visited the CAT-ACT beamline of KARA, where the importance of catalyst characterisation with special emphasis on X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) was highlighted. Our doctoral researcher Enrico Sireci and post-doctoral researcher Dr. Mariam Schulte supported the visit and contributed many examples from the work within the CARE-O-SENE project.

We would like to thank our visitors and the organisers of the tour.