Board elects physical chemistry expert as Vice President for one year.
Oldenburg chemist Prof Dr Katharina Al-Shamery is a new member of the Executive Board of the German Chemical Society (GDCh) from 2016 to 2019 - and has now also been elected to the four-member Presidential Board. This was announced by the organisation in Dresden at this year's General Assembly. The expert in physical chemistry will initially hold the office of GDCh Vice President for a period of one year from January. With around 31,000 members, the GDCh is one of the largest chemical societies in the world.
Al-Shamery has been Vice President for Research at the University of Oldenburg since 2010 and took over the office of University President on an interim basis from April 2014 up to and including July 2015. She heads the Nanophotonics and Interfacial Chemistry working group at the Institute of Chemistry. Al-Shamery studied chemistry at the Universities of Göttingen and Paris-Sud and received her doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in 1989. She then carried out research at the University of Oxford before completing her habilitation at the University of Bochum in 1999. A research stay at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin was followed by a professorship at the University of Ulm and an appointment at the University of Oldenburg in 1999. Katharina Al-Shamery has received numerous awards for her research and is a member of various professional societies and scientific organisations and their committees.
As GDCh Vice President in the coming year, Al-Shamery intends, among other things, to further promote networking with international professional societies and to focus on the topics of diversity management, equal opportunities and ethical behaviour in industry and science. She also wants to emphasise the promotion of young scientists in her work.
