POLiS Award of Excellence

The POLiS Award of Excellence for Female Researchers is given annually to an outstanding female early and mid-career researcher working in one of the scientific topics of the POLiS Cluster. It entails up to 70,000 € for one or several research stays at one of POLiS participating institutions (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Ulm University, the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) and University of Giessen) to establish and strengthen international collaborations.

Application deadline is March 31, 2025.

More information on the application process below.

Previous Awardees

Awardee 2024

In 2024, the POLiS Award for Female Researchers was given to Dr. Theresa Schoetz, Assistant Professor at The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA. 

Dr. Schoetz is an electrochemist and chemical engineer studying novel materials, chemistries, interfaces and devices for energy storage applications, in particular electrochemical materials and design for batteries and supercapacitors. She obtained her Bachelor in Chemical Engineering at Brandenburgische Technische Universität, followed by her Master of Science in Electrochemistry and Electroplating at Technische Universität Ilmenau. In 2019 she received her PhD in Sustainable Infrastructure Systems (Engineering and Physical Sciences) at the University of Southamptopn, UK where she also spent two years as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Electronics Frontiers. In 2020, Dr. Schoetz became Research Associate at the City College of New York, USA and since November 2023 she is Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA.

She is also engaged in the Women in STEM Association at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and will mainly be collaborating with Prof. Dr. Dominic Bresser in Ulm.

Awardee 2023

This year's recipient of the award is María Arnaiz, Associate Researcher at CIC energiGUNE in Spain. Until the end of July 2023, María Arnaiz is a visiting scientist at the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW). Her work at ZSW focuses on the aqueous processing of positive electrodes for lithium-ion batteries.

Further information can be found here. 

María Arnaiz will mainly collaborate with the research groups of Dr. Sonia Dsoke and Dr. Fabian Jeschull at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

Awardee 2022

POLiS is proud to announce the awardee for the POLiS Award of Excellence for Female Researchers 2022. The board of POLiS and a selection committee has selected Dr. Guiomar Hernández from Uppsala University, Department of Chemistry. Dr. Hernández is an excellence researcher working in the field of of fluorine-free electrolytes for lithium and sodium-based batteries and carbonyl-based solid polymer electrolytes to understand the transport properties and coordination strength between polymers and different cations, in particular lithium, sodium and magnesium.

Dr. Guiomar Hernández works closely with the research group of Dr. Fabian Jeschull at Karlsruhe Institute of Technolgy (KIT). Already in 2022, the collaboration started with a stay abroad of Anna Khudyshkina, during which she investigated polymer electrolytes for K-ion batteries at Uppsala University. 

As part of the collaboration, Isabell Johansson, PhD Student at Uppsala University, spent nine months at KIT. Watch a short video of Isabell. 

Furthermore, it is planned to start experiments on polymer electrolytes for Mg and Ca batteries, this will be done together with Dr. Zhirong Zhao-Karger (Institute of Nanotechnology INT; electrolyte salts/Mg & Ca) and Prof. Dr. Patrick Théato (Institute of Technical Chemistry and Polymer Chemistry ITCP; polymer synthesis).

Awardee 2021

Dr. Kelsey Hatzell, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University, received the award in 2021. She is working on the ion transport in all solid state sodium batteries and works mainly with the research groups of Dr. Marcus Rohnke and Prof. Dr. Jürgen Janek at the Justus Liebig University Giessen.

As part of the collaboration, Ana Claus, PhD student at Princeton University, is currently on a 2,5 months exchange stay at Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU). Shortly after her arrival, we have spoken to Ana to find out what she will be focusing on during her time at JLU and how important such a research stay abroad is for young researchers. Watch the video here. 

Awardee 2020

The first awardee of the POLiS Award of Excellence for female researchers was given to Dr. Ellen Watson, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Rochester.

Dr. Ellen Matson is working on organofunctionalized polyoxovanadate materials energy storage. 

As part of the award, an exchange of doctoral students took place in the research group of Dr. Montaha Anjass at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry I at the Ulm University.