RWTH Chemist Sonja Herres-Pawlis Awarded Honor
Sonja Herres-Pawlis, Chair of Bioinorganic Chemistry at RWTH Aachen University, has been inducted into the Chemistry Europe Fellows Program.
Chemistry Europe is an association of 16 chemical companies from 15 different European countries. The Chemistry Europe Fellow Program honors outstanding members who have made a significant contribution through their support, research, creativity, and innovation.
Herres-Pawlis studied chemistry at Paderborn University and Ecole de Chimie de Montpellier. She received her doctorate in bioinorganic chemistry from Paderborn University and her habilitation (post-doctoral lecturing qualification) in sustainable polymerization catalysis from TU Dortmund University. Several research stays at Stanford University in the USA and at the Ecole de Chimie de Montpellier in France shaped her career. Before becoming chair at RWTH in January 2015, she was Professor of Coordination Chemistry at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.
The chemist has already received several prizes and awards, such as a DAAD research fellowship, the Liebig Habilitation Fellowship of the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie, the Innovation Prize of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in the Young Talent category, and the Arnold Sommerfeld Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Science. The chemist was also appointed to the “Junges Kolleg” of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts in 2010. In 2021, Professor Herres-Pawlis secured funding from the Volkswagen Foundation in its Momentum – Funding for Recently Tenured Professors initiative. This aims to support the research and creativity of research personalities and to open up opportunities in this phase of their career to advance the content and strategic development of their professorship.