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Farewell Astha

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Astha Singh leaves the Kühnel Lab after almost 3 years. She was the first postdoc to join the Lab after our relocation to Hohenheim and spent a lot of her time tirelessly transforming our space from a dump into a functioning lab. Astha worked on porous materials for solar-driven H2 evolution and CO2 reduction as well as on enzyme catalysis. She published one paper on a coffee waste/COF nanocomposite and several more are to come in the near future.

Astha is moving to Bangkok to take up a semi-independent post. We will miss you and wish you the best of luck for the future!

A Day Out Together

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Our Team Hike

With the sun shining, we took a break from our desks and headed out for a team hike.

We started in Hohenheim and made our way through the woods towards the Grabkapelle on Württemberg (“Württemberg Mausoleum”, gifted from from King Wilhelm I of Württemberg to his wife, Queen Katharina).

In total, we walked around 12 km over three hours, enjoying the fresh air, nature and some great views along the way.

Once we reached the Grabkapelle, we were rewarded with a beautiful view over Stuttgart and the surrounding vineyards. Spending the day together outside our usual work environment gave us the chance to chat, get to know each other better and simply enjoy some time together as a team. We ended the day with a relaxed lunch – the perfect way to round off a sunny day together.

Welcome (back) Pauline and Zaid

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Pauline Giertz joins the Kühnel Lab as a new PhD student. Pauline studied Chemistry in Münster and received her Master’s from KIT. She will work on photocataytic CO2 reduction.

Zaid Wonde returns to the Kühnel Lab after a joint Master’s with Christine Cavazza in Grenoble. Zaid studied biology in Hohenheim and will work on biohybrid systems for solar hydrogen production.

Paper in EES Catalysis

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Léonard’s article about O2-tolerant bioelectrochemical CO2 reduction was published in EES Catalysis (read her paper here). His paper demonstrates that a combination of enzyme immobilisation on functionalised electrodes, maintaining the enzyme in a reduced state and using tailored solvents enables efficient and robust electrochemical CO2 reduction with a highly senstivie carbon monoxide dehydrogenase enzyme, even when the CO2 contains up to 14% O2.

Energase project kick-off

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From left to right: Moritz Kühnel, Hajo Kries, Michael Stier, Fabrizio Casilli, Ewan McQueen, Johannes Kästner

We kicked off our ENERGASE project with a workshop at the University of Stuttgart’s Institut of Technical Biochemistry with our collaborators from the Kries and Kästner groups. In this project, we aim to jointly develop a de novo enzyme to produce green hydrogen through a non-natural mechanism. To do that, we are combining theory, synthetic biologyand nanotechnology. This blue-sky project is funded by the Carl Zeiss Stiftung and their CZS Wildcard programme for high-risk-high-reward ideas.