Exploring the landscape of heterogeneous catalysts towards climate change mitigation

Catalysts are everywhere. If you even have a quick look around you, you are probably surrounded by materials for which a catalyst was used at some point in their manufacturing. Understanding how heterogeneous catalysts work, how we can control their preparation to improve their properties, and how their structure relates to their function, are important building blocks of knowledge if we want to tackle the energy sector transformation. This course in particular is aimed at interested bachelor and master students of Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, and Informatics. After a brief theoretical introduction in the topic, we will focus on the more specific group of catalysts used to transform CO2 into valuable chemicals, such as methanol and olefins. We will develop a research question together and during the semester, you will learn about the topic in the unique format of research-based learning. By working in small groups to solve your question, we will propose strategies to investigate various materials, e.g. by data mining of your own curated datasets, or designing experiments and analyzing the results. As well, we will reflect on the process of research itself and scientific communication, and finally present the results in both a conventional and a creative format, also for general audiences (e.g. podcast).