Irene Lamata obtained her chemistry degree at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. During her undergradute studies she took part in the erasmus + programme and spent her last year at the university of Ostrava, Czech Repulic, where she carried out a reasearch project in carbon materials. She wanted to continue growing her knowledge in materials and in 2021, she moved to Seville to get her Master´s degree in Material Science by the University of Seville. While she was doing her masters thesis, she worked as a reasercher  at the biomimetic and multifunctional materials group, where she dived deeper into carbonaceous materials. She found the topic very exciting and decided to come to Germany to work in the Sustainable Materials Group as a PhD student! She will study the the interactions between liquids and carbonaceous materials by solid state NMR.

Alexandra Glass is a doctoral student in the group Sustainable Materials Chemistry. Already during her high school time, she was fascinated about all topics she was taught in the chemistry class. Her interest to study chemistry at a university was encouraged by her teachers which led her to Paderborn University. After completing the Bachelor of Chemistry in Paderborn she switched to Materials Science for the master’s degree to broaden her knowledge on materials in general, but still holding a focus on chemistry with the offered elective courses. She concluded her master’s degree with a thesis on (near-ambient pressure) XPS studies of metal oxides under the supervision of Dr. Christian Weinberger and PD Dr. Teresa de los Arcos de Pedro. To broaden her knowledge on materials even further, she applied for the position in the group of Jun. Prof. Nieves Lopez Salas to work on sustainable carbonaceous materials and study them with near-ambient pressure XPS.