Institut für Anorganische Chemie


Prof. Dr. Ulli Englert - retired!


Former affiliation: 

Department of Inorganic Chemistry 
RWTH Aachen 
Landoltweg 1 
D-52056 Aachen 

E-Mail: 
ullrich.englert "at" rwth-aachen.de




Teaching
Research
CV and Publications
Cooperation with Shanxi University
Team

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Team

9. Nacht der Professoren...
click here for a less serious group photograph...
click here for a 2021 group photograph...
click here for a nostalgic CAD4 photograph...
Nacht der Professoren 2020...


In addition to the group members enumerated below who stayed with us for a longer period, many B.Sc. and research students have made relevant contributions as well.
Thank you Axel, Andreas, Alexander, Sandra, Maria, Steffi, Silvia, Amr, Runzi, Pol, Thomas, Niklas & Nick, Chenchen, Ben, Robert, Noah, Lukas, Justin, Leana, Greta, Felix & Felix, Daniel & Daniel and many others...



Former group members and visiting scientists - in (roughly) reverse chronological order.

Ulli Englert 

Ulli has been leading the molecular structure group since 1989. He is interested in the synthesis of building blocks for extended structures, in engineering and reactivity of molecular crystals - for short: in all solid state aspects of molecular solids. Home lab equipment apart, neutron diffraction at FRM2 Munich and synchrotron radiation at DESY Hamburg and ESRF Grenoble provide the data!

Irmgard Kalf

Irmgard was trained as a laboratory technician. She worked on the synthesis, spectroscopic characterization, and crystal chemistry of coordination compounds. She is an expert in crystallization methods and a frequent co-author of our publications.

Hans Gildenast

As his first encounter with our ditopic ligands was really productive, Hans joined us for his Master thesis and successfully came up with a new sulfur-based ligand. His doctoral dissertation targeted hard-soft coordination by substituted phosphatriptycenes. Their restrained geometry implies modest sigma donor but excellent pi acceptor properties. Hans obtained his doctoral degree in Spring 2023-

Steven van Terwingen

After his successful Master thesis on extended ditopic ligands, Steven has been focussing on more rigid connectors between the hard and soft coordination sites, their derivatives and potential applications in catalysis. He and his bachelor students discovered the peaceful coexistence of orthogonal halogen and hydrogen bonds in hydrohalides. Steven graduated in autumn 2022.

Ruimin Wang

Ruimin received her BSc in 1984 from Nankai University, China and her Diploma with RWTH Aachen in 1995 with Prof. Welf Bronger. She was awarded her PhD in 2000 for a thesis on mixed crystals of Cobalt (III) complexes and lattice energy calculations in our group. After her graduation, she focussed on experimental electron density based on high resolution diffraction experiments. In 2019, Ruimin became a guest professor of Shanxi University, Taiyuan/China.

Marius Kremer

In the context of his M.Sc. thesis, Marius was investigating the degradation of one of our favourite ditopic ligands. His doctoral dissertation focused on Bio-MOFs; in parallel, he triggered our our regular stays at beamline P24 in DESY. Marius is now working for Anton Paar in non-ambient and in-situ powder diffraction.

Franziska Busse

Franzi did experimental work with Hans and became co-author of a publication. Subject of her M.Sc. thesis with Ruimin was the experimental electron density of co-crystals based on halogen bonds.

Yanyan An

Yanyan came to Aachen in summer 2019 und stayed with us until October 2020. She was working on semi-rigid polycarboxylato ligands for the design of extended structures and also developed her own ligand in RWTH. In the meantime, she has completed her PhD in Taiyuan.

Ina Stickeler

Ina did both her B.Sc. and M.Sc. theses in our group. Her bachelor thesis covered square planar and tetrahedral complexes as building blocks for Crystal Engineering. In her master thesis, she employed dicarboxylic acids as ligands for coordination polymers.

Khai Truong

Khai obtained his doctoral degree on ditopic ligands and their derivatives. The structural work in this context included dynamics and phase transitions and was not only based on X-ray but also on neutron diffraction. After a postdoc with Prof. Kari Rissanen in Jyväskylä University, Finland, Khai joined Rigaku.

Akmal Tojiboev

Akmal joined our team twice as a guest scientist. He was a senior teacher in Namangan State University, Uzbekistan and has later moved to Tashkent. His main interests are charge density studies and teaching in crystallography - he is working on a multi-language crystallographic dictionary!

Mansoureh Zahedi

Mansoureh was a visiting scientist in our group from Jan. to Sept. 2016. Souri worked on Schiff bases as lihands and on synthesis, structure and properties of coordination polymers. When she joined our team, she had a M.Sc. degree from Tabriz University, Iran; by now, she has obtained her PhD.

Ai Wang

Ai joined our group with a BSc from Yunnan Normal University, China, and a MSc with Prof. Yuekui Wang in Shanxi University. She obtained her PhD with a fellowship from the China Scholarship Council. Her main interest was high resolution diffraction, ideally followed by experimental charge density studies. She also contributed careful experimental results in variable temperature diffraction. Back to China, Ai started the next step of her scientific career in Shanxi University, Taiyuan.

Qianqian Guo

Qianqian did her undergraduate studies in Zhengzhou University, China and earned her MSc in the group of Prof. Hongwei Hou. She joined our group with a fellowship from the China Scholarship Council and obtained her PhD with studies on Pd chain polymers and their tunable phase transitions and on a new ditopic ligand. Qianqian also invented a very useful way to enforce O coordination in substituted acetylacetones. Qianqian now works at the International Office of Zhejiang University.

Stefanie Langenstück

Steffi was trained as a teacher in chemistry, biology and mathematics. In a joint venture with Prof. Michael Schroeder, IPC, she built a bridge between up-to-date research and didactics. Steffi was in charge of the Schüleruni Chemie.

Kevin Lamberts

In his BSc thesis, Kevin studied a reversible crystal-to-crystal phase transition which is tunable over a wide temperature range by doping with an isomorphous compound. He was involved in an interdisciplinary seed fund project with graph theory experts (Prof. Guo & his team) and the virtual reality group (Prof. Kuhlen and coworkers) aiming at the simplification and understanding of extended structures. Kevin earned his doctoral degree with the coordination of amino acids of essential metals and is now a patent attorney.

William Raven

William's PhD thesis focussed on the synthesis and structural characterization of cycloplatinated primary amines. He has addressed Pt(II) and Pt(IV) complexes, with the emphasis on potential applications in chemotherapy. These studies were performed in cooperation with Prof. Tolba and PD Dr. Steitz and with Prof. Mottaghy and his team in University Hospital Aachen (UKA).

Friedrich Steuber

Friedrich did his B.Sc. and M.Sc. theses in our group, both on phase transitions and solid state reactivity in bimetallic coordination polymers. He obtained his PhD from Trinity College Dublin/Ireland. Friedrich now works as a patent attorney.

Carina Merkens

Carina obtained her BSc with a thesis on thermolysis of organic-inorganic hybride materials. This strategy allows to prepare polymers which are not accesibble via conventional synthesis in solution. In her MSc and PhD project, she worked on the synthesis and structure of bimetallic networks. She was awarded the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Preis in 2012. Carina now works as a patent attorney.

Fangfang Pan

Fangfang obtained his MSc from Zhengzhou University and joined our group for the PhD with a fellowship from the China Scholarship Council. Fangfang worked on crystal engineering and charge density of dynamic coordination complexes and sulfonamides.He finished his doctoral dissertation in July 2013 and joined Prof. Kari Rissanen in Jyväskylä university for a post doc. At present, Fangfang is group leader in Central China Normal University, Wuhan.

Nadine Boymans

Nadine was awarded a MINT scholarship for her PhD which was in the field of chemical didactics. She was in charge of our lab courses for grammar school students and the organizer for the summer university in chemistry. After her very successful graduation, Nadine started to work as a grammar school teacher.

Mihaela Schmitz

Mihaela ("Mura") obtained her MSc from University 'Politehnica' of Bucharest. She was awarded a DAAD Fellowship for finishing her PhD in Aachen where she was assembling molecular building blocks to extended structures. Mura has successfully "petrified" one of the shortest O-H...O hydrogen bonds ever studied!

Yutian Wang

Yutian graduated from Shanxi University, China, and joined us in May 2005 as a PhD candidate. His work centered around chiral coordination polymers, particularly silver derivatives. Yutian received his PhD in May 2009. He is now working for the Chinese branch of Bruker as an application scientist.
Kambarali Turgunov Kambarali was a visiting scientist at the end of 2006 and, again, in 2012.
He is based in the Institute of the Chemistry of Plant Substances, Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan.

Malgorzata Kondracka

"Meggie" obtained her M.Sc. in Poland. Her PhD thesis in Halle was on molybdenum and tungsten chemistry. She has been successfully involved in the synthesis and structural characterization of mixed-metal coordination polymers. Meggie is now working for Lukasiewicz INS Pulawy, Poland.

Janice Rubin-Preminger

Janice did her undergraduate studies in South Africa and obtained her PhD with Joel Bernstein in Israel. She worked in our group for two years with a MINERVA fellowship and later joined pharmaceutical industry as a patent specialist.

Chunhua Hu

Chunhua ("Tony") came from Shanghai, China. He obtained his first PhD degree in Fudan University (Prof. Peiju Zheng) in 1999.
He joined Ulli's group as postdoctoral fellow and obtained a second PhD from RWTH in July 2004 with a thesis on crystal engineering. After a stay in Frankfurt University with Prof. Martin U. Schmidt, Chunhua moved to the States and is now staff crystallographer at NYU.

Desiree van Holt

Desy joined the group for her diploma thesis on molecular alloys. She obtained her doctoral degree with experimental work done in FZ Juelich.

Beatrice Cula

Beatrice ("Betty") obtained her MSc from University 'Politehnica' of Bucharest. Based on a fellowship of the graduate program 'Methods in Asymmetric Synthesis', she earned her PhD degree in our group in summer 2004 on chiral solids. After a postdoctoral stay in Spain, she returned to Aachen where she worked in the field of novel organoplatinum complexes with potential antitumor activity. In 2010, Betty joined Prof. Christian Limberg's group at Humboldt University, Berlin, as a crystallographer. She is an active member of DGK.
Xiaolai Zheng Following his Ph.D. at the RWTH Aachen in May 2001 (his 2nd - the 1st was at Dalian University of Technology, China, in 1998) Xiaolai is a co-authors of our first publication on quasi-racemates. After his stay at RWTH, he went to the states and joined BASF.
Qi Li Qi Li worked with us for one year. He was professor and group leader at Beijing Normal University, Department of Chemistry and is now retired. His interest is focused on crystallization, structure determination, and database searches in the context of polymorphism studies.

Roland Härter

Diploma in Chemistry with RWTH Aachen in 1998 on Wide angle X-ray scattering of molecular compounds. Roland was working as a grammar school teacher and now relies on his expertise with computers.

Beate Ganter 

Beate has finished her Ph.D. thesis in 1998 under the supervision of Prof. Gerhard E. Herberich. She studied molecular crystals in the context of her own thesis and for other groups as well. Beate is now working for a Bayer-G.E. joint venture.

Trixie Wagner

After her Ph.D. thesis in December 1995 on solid state reactivity and packing in moleuclar crystals, Trixie completed a postdoc stage in proteine crystallography, and is now working for Novartis Switzerland. Her interest in molecular crystallography involves chiral compounds of low resonant scattering and modulated structures.

Martin U. Schmidt

Martin earned his PhD by predicting crystal structures based on atom-atom potentials. He joined Hoechst and shortly after moved back to academia. His group in Frankfurt University specializes in all aspects of powders and pdfs.

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Autor: Prof. U. Englert, IAC (26.07.2004, 26.07.2004,  02.08.2023)