Udo Kragl New Chairman of the German Society for Catalysis GeCatS

Udo Kragl, University of Rostock, Germany, is the new Chairman of the German Society for Catalysis GeCatS. He succeeds Dorit Wolf, Evonik Resource Efficiency GmbH, Hanau, Germany. Reinhard Schomäcker, TU Berlin, and Andreas Meiswinkel, Linde AG/Pullach, both Germany, were elected as Deputy Chairmen.

The German Catalysis Society (GeCatS) is the platform for the entire German catalysis community. It currently has around 1100 members from industry and academia and is supported by DECHEMA (expert network for chemical engineering and biotechnology in Germany), VDI-GVC (Verein Deutscher Ingeniere -Gesellschaft Verfahrenstechnik und Chemieingenieurwesen), GDCh (German Chemical Society), DGMK (Deutsche Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft für Erdöl, Erdgas und Kohle e.V.), and DBG (Deutsche Bunsen-Gesellschaft).

Udo Kragl, born 1961 in Troisdorf-Sieglar, Germany, studied chemistry at the University of Bonn, Germany, and received his Ph.D. there in 1992. After a research stay at the International Research Laboratories of Ciba Geigy Limited (now Novartis) in Takarazuka, Japan, he joines the Research Centre in Jülich, Germany, where he completed his habilitation in 1998. In the same year, he accepted a position at the University of Rostock. From February to April 2007, he was a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore. Since 2015, Udo Kragl has been Vice-Rector for Research and Research Education at the University of Rostock.

The core area of Udo Kragl’s research is biocatalysis. In particular, he is dedicated to the synthetic application of enzymes. Further topics include membrane technology and processing issues, as well as research in the field of renewable resources, ionic liquids, and trace and process analytics.

Reinhard Schomäcker, born in 1959 in Rahden, Germany, studied chemistry at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, where he received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 1987. From 1990 to 1996, he worked as a chemist at Bayer AG in Leverkusen, Germany. In 1992, he habilitated in physical chemistry at the University of Cologne, Germany. In 1996, he was appointed Professor at the TU Berlin.

Since 2007, Reinhard Schomäcker has been a member of the Board of Management of the Excellence Cluster Unifying Concepts in Catalysis (UniCat). Among other honors, he received the German Gas Industry Prize for Innovation and Climate Protection in 2016.

Schomäcker’s research focusses on the field of reaction engineering, especially in the areas of reaction kinetics, the development of new reactors and process concepts, as well as the control of the activity and selectivity of catalysts.

Andreas Meiswinkel studied at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Germany, and received his Ph.D. from the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany, in 2003. He has held various positions at Linde AG, Pullach, Germany, and is currently Group Leader R&D Petrochemicals.