Dr. Reich Prize Awarded to Tina Jungnickel and Tobias Groß

The first ever Dr. Reich Prize was awarded retroactively for the year 2022, as part of the well-established Siegfried Hünig Lecture 2023. From now on, it will always be awarded on the Day of Organic Chemistry. Since 2014, this event has taken place in the last lecture-free week before the start of the winter semester. It gives students of chemistry and biochemistry the opportunity to get to know the diversity of research at the Institute of Organic Chemistry. It is not the lecturers who are the main actors. Rather, doctoral candidates present their research topics in short oral presentations and by means of posters.

The Dr. Reich Prize

This prize, endowed with EUR 1,000, is awarded annually in honor of Dr. Hans Heiner Reich to one or two graduates of the chemistry program who have shown outstanding academic performance and whose master's thesis was written at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Würzburg and evaluated with the top grade of 1.0. Together with his wife Marlene Tauber, Dr. Reich decided to establish a foundation for the "promotion of science and research as well as education, popular and vocational training, including student aid in the Department of Gynaecology at the University Hospital Würzburg and in the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität". The foundation's profits not only finance the Dr. Reich Prize, but since 2023 also a Dr. Reich Scholarship and the Dr. Reich Lecture

Tina Jungnickel

Tina Jungnickel started studying chemistry at JMU in the winter semester 2017/18 and graduated with distinction in the winter semester 2020/21. She wrote her bachelor's thesis at the chair of Prof. Claudia Höbartner, where she apparently liked it so much that she decided to investigate the chemistry of nucleic acids again for her master's thesis. Her thesis, which was submitted in August 2023 and awarded a grade of 1.0, is entitled "Synthesis of bioorthogonal ribozyme cofactors and their use for site-specific labelling of RNA". She completed her master's degree with the top grade of 1.0.

Tobias Groß

Tobias Groß also decided to go for a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at JMU in 2017. His bachelor thesis was supervised by Professor Frank Würthner. After working on macrocyclic water oxidation catalysts there, he decided to join the chair of Prof. Christoph Lambert for his master's thesis. The title is "Synthesis and Characterization of Novel Donor-Acceptor Dyads for the Study of Magnetic Field-Dependent E-Type Fluorescence". With an overall grade of 1.1 in his master's program, Tobias Groß is also a worthy award winner and role model for the students, who applauded him and Tina Jungnickel vigorously at the award ceremony.

Further Informationen about the foundation: Tauber Dr. Reich Foundation