In spring, the University Executive Board of TUD Dresden University of Technology awarded Dr. Manès Weisskircher, Dr. Andreas Schneemann, Dr. Minghao Yu and Dr. Markus Vorrath (né Henke) the status of TUD Young Investigators.

Dr. Manès Weisskircher (Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science) heads the BMBF-funded junior research group “REXKLIMA – Far-right politics versus climate action” at the Institute of Political Science at TU Dresden. Moreover, he is an affiliate of the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo, and the Center for Civil Society Research at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. His research focuses on social movements, political parties, democracy and far-right activists.

Manès Weisskircher received his doctorate from the European University Institute in Florence in 2019. He has taught at universities in Bonn, Bucharest, Düsseldorf and Vienna and at the Social Science College of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.

Dr. Andreas Schneemann (Faculty of Chemistry and Food Chemistry) is a Liebig Fellow of the Chemical Industry Fund and has headed the junior research group “Material Chemistry of Covalent Organic Frameworks” since 2019. Moreover, he is Principal Investigator in the Collaborative Research Center 1415 “Chemistry of Synthetic Two-Dimensional Materials,” where he is investigating the fundamental understanding and development of covalent-organic 2D framework-based materials.

Andreas Schneemann was awarded his doctorate at Ruhr University Bochum in 2016, after which he was a postdoctoral researcher at Technical University of Munich and Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, USA, before joining TU Dresden in 2019.

Dr. Minghao Yu (Faculty of Chemistry and Food Chemistry) has been research group leader at the Chair of Molecular Functional Materials at TU Dresden since 2019. His research focuses on the production of sustainable energy storage systems such as supercapacitors, hybrid ion capacitors, liquid batteries, dual-ion batteries and multivalent metal batteries.

Yu received his doctorate in materials physics and chemistry from Sun Yat-sen University (China) in June 2017. He joined TUD as a postdoctoral researcher funded by a Humboldt Research Fellowship. He has already been listed several times in Clarivate Analytics’ list of Highly Cited Researchers worldwide and has received numerous other awards.

Dr. E.-F. Markus Vorrath (né Henke) (Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology) is junior research group leader of the Emmy Noether MEiTNER Group. His research focuses on compliant, biomimetic robotic systems. The MEiTNER project is investigating multifunctional, flexible dielectric elastomers (DEs), so-called artificial muscles, for these robots.

Markus Vorrath received his Diplom in mechatronics and his doctorate in electrical engineering from TU Dresden in 2010 and 2014. From 2015 to 2017, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Biomimetics Lab at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute in New Zealand, receiving MSCA and DAAD scholarships from the European Union. In September 2017, Dr. Vorrath returned to the Chair of Microsystems at TU Dresden.

The status of TUD Young Investigator strengthens the position of excellent, independent junior research group leaders in Dresden by integrating them more closely into the faculties and offering a range of qualifications specifically tailored to their needs.

The aim is to counteract the structural disadvantages that independent junior research group leaders sometimes face due to their undefined status and the sometimes inadequate or nonexistent connection to a faculty.

More detailed information:
https://tu-dresden.de/ga/die-einrichtung/news/vier-neue-tud-young-investigator
https://tu-dresden.de/forschung-transfer/wissenschaftlicher-nachwuchs/nach-der-promotion/tud-young-investigators

Contact:
TUD Press office
Tel.: 0351 463-32398