Professor Ferdi Schüth, Director at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Coal Research, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany, has been elected Vice-President at the 65th Annual Meeting of the Max Planck Society (MPG) in Munich, Germany for a six-year term of office.
Dr. Dr. h.c. Angela Friederici, Director at the MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, and Professor Bill S. Hansson, Director at the MPI for Chemical Ecology, Jena, have also been elected Vice-Presidents. Professor Peter Gruss is succeeded by Dr. Martin Stratmann, Director at the MPI for Eisenforschung, Düsseldorf, Germany, as President of the Max Planck Society.

Ferdi Schüth will now oversee the 32 institutes of the Chemistry, Physics & Technology Section. Among other things, he will also be responsible for long-term major projects and shared infrastructure, with particular emphasis on the IT infrastructure at the MPG.

Ferdi Schüth studied chemistry and law at the University of Münster, Germany. There he received his doctorate in chemistry in 1988 under Ewald Wicke. Schüth spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota, USA, with Lanny Schmidt. From 1989 to 1995, he worked on his habilitation at the University of Mainz, Germany, under Klaus Unger, and for five months in 1993 with Galen D. Stucky at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. In 1995, he moved to Frankfurt University, Germany. In 1998, he was appointed Director of the MPI for Coal Research.

Schüth is a member of the advisory board of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Advanced Materials, ChemCatChem, ChemSusChem, and Chemistry – An Asian Journal.

Schüth´s research involves the synthesis and characterization of inorganic materials, with particular focus on heterogenous catalysis of CO oxidation and energy related conversions, for example, for methane activation, biomass conversion, and catalyzed hydrogen storage.

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Selected articles

• Carbon-Based Yolk–Shell Materials for Fuel Cell Applications,
  Carolina Galeano, Claudio Baldizzone, Hans Bongard, Bernd Spliethoff, Claudia Weidenthaler, Josef C. Meier, Karl J. J. Mayrhofer, Ferdi Schüth,
  Adv. Funct. Mat. 2014, 24 (2), 220–232.
  DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201302239
• An Orders-of-Magnitude Increase in the Rate of the Solid-Catalyzed CO Oxidation by In Situ Ball Milling,
  Sarah Immohr, Michael Felderhoff, Claudia Weidenthaler, Ferdi Schüth,
  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 125 (48), 12920–12923.
  DOI: 10.1002/ange.201305992
• A Strategy for the Synthesis of Mesostructured Metal Oxides with Lower Oxidation States,
  H. Tüysüz, C. Weidenthaler, F. Schüth,
  Chem. Eur. J. 2012, 18, 5080.
  DOI: 10.1002/chem.201103650

Also of interest:

• Video: Wissenschaftsforum: F. Schüth on Catalysts for Alternative Fuels,
  Ferdi Schüth, Max Planck Institute for Coal Research, Germany, talks about his work on catalysts for alternative fuels