Board
The board of the Swiss Crystallographic Society is a group of scientists, researchers and business professionals, with strong involvement in Swiss and international research. Our aim is to steer the society so that it is useful and supportive to communities interested in materials and life sciences. The current board members include: Ekaterina Pomjakushina, Paula Abdala, Pascal Schouwink, Simon Grabowsky, Nicola Casati. and Céline Besnard.
Meet them in the sections below!
PD Dr. Simon Grabowsky
President
University of Bern
Departement für Chemie, Biochemie und Pharmazie
Freiestrasse 3
CH - 3012 Bern
Phone: +41 31 684 42 81
e-mail:
website
Simon Grabowsky studied chemistry at Free University of Berlin and received his doctoral degree from the same institution in 2011 before he went to the University of Western Australia (UWA) in Perth for a postdoctoral stay with Professors Mark Spackman and Dylan Jayatilaka. Simon became Assistant Professor at UWA in early 2014, but left later in the same year in order to take on an Emmy Noether fellowship of the German Research Foundation (DFG) which allowed him to be head of a research group at the University of Bremen, Germany. In 2015, he became an Extraordinary Professor, and in 2019 he passed his habilitation in physical chemistry at the University of Bremen. Since August 2019, Simon is a private docent and permanent research group leader in chemistry at the University of Bern as successor of Professor Piero Macchi. He was elected vice-President of the Swiss Society for Crystallography in 2021.
Vice-President
Dr.Ekaterina Pomjakushina
Paul Scherrer Institute
Laboratory for Multiscale Materials Experiments (LMX)
Center for Neutron and Muon Sciences (CNM)
WLGA/U121
CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland
Phone: ++41 56 310 3207
e-mail:
Ekaterina Pomjakushina graduated from the D. Mendeleyev University of Chemical Technology of Russia in 1988 and received her doctoral degree in 1996 from the same university. From 1989 to 2002, she worked as a scientist at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia. Since 2003, she has been working at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland. From 2017, she has led the Solid State Chemistry Group at the Laboratory for Multiscale Materials Experiments (LMX) at PSI.
Her expertise lies in solid-state chemistry, with a particular focus on crystal growth and the design of materials with novel electronic properties. The high-quality single crystals produced by her group are central to numerous high-profile research projects carried out both at PSI and at international large-scale facilities. Her research interests encompass a broad range of materials, including transition-metal complex oxides—particularly those involving exotic oxidation states—transition-metal complex salts, and intermetallic compounds.
Dr. Pascal Schouwink
Treasurer
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne EPFL
Institut des Sciences et Ingénierie Chimiques
Rue de l’Industrie 17
Case postale 440
CH-1951 Sion
Phone: +41 21 695 82 80
e-Mail:
website
Pascal studied Geosciences in Heidelberg, Germany, with a focus on mineral physics and got interested in crystallography during his diploma thesis and part of his PhD while doing experimental investigations on structural alterations induced by heavy ion damage to phosphates and perovskites at extreme conditions, using, amongst others, single crystal and powder X-ray diffraction. During a relocation of the lab that was hosting him as doctoral student to Vienna he decided to change topic and materials and moved to the University of Geneva to start a PhD in the group of Radovan Cerny at the laboratory of Crystallography, which got him into very close contact with powder diffraction and in-situ studies, at the time on quite challenging materials prone to structural disorder, which served as platform to develop hydrogen storage systems and all-solid batteries. During these years, and a later bridging postdoc, he developed a passion for X-ray scattering, neutron scattering and their applications to materials chemistry in general. He then joined the Institute des Sciences et Ingénierie Chimique (ISIC) at the EPFL as a facility manager, first at the freshly inaugurated EPFL Valais antenna (2015), later on developing the labs across both ISIC sites and finally merging them to a departmental facility. Pascal considers himself very fortunate to be working at a sweet spot between facility management, experimental work and interdisciplinary collaborations built around very diverse research projects that make use of X-ray scattering and crystallography. This makes him go to the lab happily and with anticipation on the very most of days of the year. In 2021 Pascal took over the presidency of the SSCr. Motivation is high.
Secretary and Newsletter responsible
Dr. Paula Abdala
ETH Zürich
Inst. f. Energie-u.Verfahrenstech.
LEE P 204
Leonhardstrasse 21
CH-8093 Zürich
Phone: +41 44 633 8704
e-mail:
website
About Paula
Paula Abdala received her Ph.D. in Science and Technology; mention Materials in 2010 at Universidad General San Martin, Buenos Aires, Argentina for her work on nanostructured and fine-grained ZrO2-Sc2O3 materials for intermediate-temperature solid oxide fuel cells. Afterward, she moved to Grenoble, France, to work as a post-doctoral researcher on X-ray absorption and total scattering techniques at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. In 2014, she joined the Laboratory of Energy Science and Engineering (LESE) at the Institute of Energy Technology, ETH Zürich where she works as a senior scientist. The focus of her research is the understanding of the interplay between structure and function in materials for sustainable applications, such as heterogeneous catalysts and CO2-sorbents. She applies advanced characterization techniques, such as synchrotron X-rays-based operando methods to reveal the structure of the materials at working conditions and at different length and time scales. The ultimate goal of her research is to provide a basis for the rational design of new efficient materials. (Link: https://lese.mavt.ethz.ch/the-group/person-detail.html?persid=212070)
Dr. Nicola Casati
Paul Scherrer Institute PSI
Forschungsstrasse 111
5232 Villigen PSI
Switzerland
Phone: +41 56 310 53 46
e-mail:
Nicola Casati studied chemistry at the Universita' degli studi di Milano where he also obtained his PhD in Structural Chemistry. He became staff scientist at the Materials Science beamline of the SLS in 2012 and became head of the Materials Science group in 2018, the position he currently holds. Since 2020 he is also part of ANAXAM, the Technology Transfer Centre for Advanced Manufacturing.Casati Nicola's research focuses on the effects of mechanical forces on the stability of structures and chemical bonding. Two main branches of research stem from this interest.The first is the investigation of materials under high hydrostatic pressure (several GPa). The second branch is the study of mechano-chemical reactions, which are happening under less energetic conditions, such as manual or mechanical grinding (typically in a ball-milling setup).
Dr. Céline Besnard
Ecole de Physique
Quai Ernest Ansermet 24
1211 Genève
Phone: +41 223796202
e-mail:
Céline Besnard received her ph-D from Lund University in 2004. She then work in the laboratory of Crystallography at E.P.F.L. in the group of Marc Schiltz. Since 2009, she is a service crystallographer at the University of Geneva. Her interest is in structure determination using X-ray as well as electron diffraction.
Auditeurs:
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Spingler (University of Zurich)
Prof. Dr. Antonia Neels (EMPA)