Professor Sason Shaik (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel) is the 2010 Awardee for the "Frontiers in Biological Chemistry" Lectureship and Award. He will lecture at the Institute in the week of April 23, 2012.

The Marie Curie Actions provide research training, career development and mobility schemes allowing researchers to be truly mobile both internationally and between commercial and non-commercial sectors. There are opportunities for researchers at any career stage and of any nationality. Group leader at the Institute accept IEF and IIF MC Fellows and assist them with the application.

On the 12th March 2012 the workshop “Challenges in Energy Research: Designing Catalyst Materials for Energy Conversion Processes” was organized at the Max-Planck Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry by Prof. Alexander Auer. Guests from several instututions like the FHI in Berlin, the MPIE in Düsseldorf, the MPI für Kohlenforschung and the Ruhr University in Bochum were invited to discuss recent advances in energy research.

Professor Frank Neese, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry, was appointed as Associate Editor of the journal "Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics".

The new ORCA version 2.9 has been just released. Besides numerous improvements in the existing code few new features have been added.

Still active in his retirement phase: Prof. Clemens von Sonntag, former group leader at the Institute, received the "Excellence in Reviews"-Award of "Environmental Science & Technology" (a publication of the American Chemical Society).

An international team of researchers led by scientists from our Institute has solved an important problem of biological nitrogen chemistry. As they report on November 18 in "Science", they could establish the chemical structure of the active component which in Nature is responsible for the conversion of dinitrogen to ammonia (see attached press release).

A novel complex with three iron atoms as central active site kann split the very stable dinitrogen molecule and, in reaction with dihydrogen, generate ammonia. The substance was sythesized by American colleagues in Rochester and analyzed by Dr. Eckhard Bill from our Institute. Details were published on November 11 in "Science" (see attached press release).

On October 6, 2011, Prof. Silvia Braslavsky, until her retirement in 2007 group leader at our Institute, will receive in Buenos Aires from the Argentinian Minister of Research Dr. Lino Barañao the Raices Award.

Since 2006 Frank Neese held the Chair of Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Bonn - and maintained since 2008 as one of the rare "Max Planck Fellows" a small research group at the Max Planck Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry. As of July 1, 2011 he was appointed Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and leads as Director a new department for molecular theory and spectroscopy at the Institute.

Dr. Johannes Messinger, group leader at the Institute, has accepted the offer of a full professorship (Chair) in chemistry at the University of Umea in Sweden. He will leave the Institute end of August, but will continue to cooperate with the research groups.