1.5 million euros for young FAU scientist

Prof. Dr. Jana Zaumseil receives renowned European research grant

Prof. Dr. Jana Zaumseil from FAU’s Department of Polymers Science has been awarded a prestigious research grant and will receive funding of almost 1.5 million euros. The scientist is part of a small group of young researchers who have been awarded one of the highly coveted ‘Starting Independent Researchers Grants’ and will now be supported by the European Research Council (ERC) for the next five years. ERC provides funding to promising young researchers to give them the chance to establish their own research groups and to pursue research projects with great innovative potential.

The research project

Prof. Zaumseil’s project bears the title EN-LUMINATE. Its aim is to improve the luminosity and energy efficiency of organic light diodes. To do so, Prof. Zaumseil uses plasmonic nano antennae and minute gold particles with a diameter of approximately 10 to 100 nanometres. Similar to radio antennae which amplify radio waves, the nano antennae amplify the light waves in the diodes making them brighter. In the future, organic light diodes could be used in smartphone and computer displays or in optical communication circuits.

The awardee: Jana Zaumseil

Prof. Dr. Jana Zaumseil was offered a position at FAU within the the Cluster of Excellence ‘Engineering of Advanced Materials’. Since then, she has headed the research group ‘Nanomaterials for Optoelectronics’ at the Department of Materials Science. Her main interest in research and teaching is the synthesis and nanoscale study of materials whose optical and electronic properties may be manipulated by changes in their size or form. Among those materials are carbon nano tubes and metallic and semiconducting nano particles. Prof. Zaumseil’s aim is to use these materials in optoelectronic components.

Born in Jena in 1977, she studied chemistry at the University of Leipzig. After a year’s research stay at the prestigious Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, USA, she earned her doctorate at the University of Cambridge. Subsequently, she spent several years in the USA and Great Britain before accepting a professorship at FAU in October 2009. This position included the Cluster’s ‘EAM Award’ worth 750,000 euros. In 2010, she received the Alfried Krupp Award for young researchers from the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation.

Further information may be found online at www.nmoe.techfak.uni-erlangen.de.

uni | media service | research No. 33/2012 on 10.8.2012