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Welcome Lara Williams

Konstanz chemist Natalie Schunck was awarded the Karl Freudenberg Prize last weekend. The award from the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities recognizes her work studying diatoms as producers of sustainable chemicals.

Why 3,000 bars are needed to take a comprehensive look at a protein: Konstanz researchers Frederic Berner and Michael Kovermann present a new high-pressure spectroscopy method to unravel the properties of proteins' native structures.

How do living organisms produce minerals – for example, for their shells? Researchers from the University of Konstanz and Leibniz University Hannover have come a step closer to answering this question. In a joint study, they have deciphered the formation mechanism of amorphous calcium carbonate, an intermediate in biomineralization.

Malte Drescher, a physicist and vice rector at the University of Konstanz, will become president of the recently founded University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU) starting in October of 2024.

Ein Nachruf für Helmut Cölfen geschrieben von Stefan Mecking

Helmut Cölfen sadly passed away on November 28, 2023, after long illness, at the age of only 58 years. This is a terrible loss not only for his family, but also for his students, colleagues, and friends.

His scientific findings have entirely changed our view of crystallization processes, this fundamental understanding readily translating into many practical applications.

Helmut Cölfen was born on July 24, 1965 in Krefeld. He grew up…

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded an ERC Synergy Grant of 9,996,000 Euros to the project “The role of silica at the dawn of life on our planet” (PROTOS). In the project, Helmut Cölfen, professor of physical chemistry at the University of Konstanz, will collaborate with researchers from the University of Bremen, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS-Geo-Ocean) in Brest, and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC ) in Granada that coordinates the project.

Konstanz chemists develop mineral plastics with numerous positive properties from sustainable basic building blocks and, together with biologists, demonstrate the material's excellent microbiological degradability.

Konstanz researchers discover the function of a previously unexplored protein: In three characteristic steps, "C12orf29" links the ends of RNA strands. Proteins that perform this kind of RNA ligation were previously unknown in humans. The results of the study suggest that it is important for RNA repair during cellular stress.