Seminar Talks


BENCh seminars take place Tuesdays/Wednesdays/Thursdays in combination with the Institutes of Physical, Organic, and Inorganic Chemistry seminars. They provide unique opportunities for the students to invite and interact with national and international researchers and include extended discussion times with the guests, whereby not only the topic of research but also general benchmarking strategies/caveats can be addressed.

BENCh students who want to invite a guest should contact Prof. Krawczuk (IAC), Prof. Walker (IOBC), or Prof. Obenchain (IPC) when planning the dates for a visit. This will help in announcing the events to the faculty. If a guest speaker cancels, please notify each institute's respective organizing professor.

Upcoming and previous seminars


Prof. Dr. Markus Meuwly (University of Basel, Switzerland)
"TBA"
October 24th 2024
TBA; TBA

Prof. Dr. Bas de Bruin (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)
"Fe-mediated radical-type reactions; From C-H amination to applications in paint."
February 6th 2024
MN28; 05:15 p.m.

Prof. Dr. Janus Eriksen (DTU, Denmark)
"Future Perspectives on Incremental Electronic-Structure Theory"
January 9th 2024
MN30; 02:15 p.m.




Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel (FU Berlin, Germany)
"Paper writing and publishing"
December 12th 2023
MN32; 02:00 - 03:00 p.m.

Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel (FU Berlin, Germany)
"Structural Analysis of Biomolecules in the Gas Phase"
December 11th 2023
MN28; 05:15 p.m.

Prof. Dr. Bruno Martínez Haya (Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain)
"Loose protons in molecular bonds, insights from experiment and modelling"
December 5th 2023
MN30; 05:15 p.m.

Prof. Dr. Alessandro Genoni (CNRS & University of Lorraine, France)
"Methods Based on Localized Orbitals for Quantum Chemistry and Quantum Crystallography"
November 14th 2023

Prof. Dr. Olga Garcia Mancheno (WWU Münster, Germany)
"Supramolecular Triazole-Based Anion-binding Catalysis"
October 25th 2023

Casper Jensen (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
"Overtones, Dimer Formation, and Other Rabbit Holes of Alcohols and Hydroperoxides"
October 25th 2023

Dr. Silvia Gomez Coca (University of Barcelona, Spain)
"Theoretical Methods in Molecular Magnetism"
TBA 2023

Prof. Dr. John F. Stanton (University of Florida, USA)
"Thermochemistry: Not as Boring as You Think (or, Motivation for High-Accuracy Quantum Chemistry)"
April 20th 2023

Dr. Katharina Meyer (University of Wisconsin-Madinson, USA)
"An internal affair with external implications: The solvation of alkali metal ion-peptide complexes"
January 24th 2023




Dr. Maren Podewitz (TU Vienna, Austria)
"Towards Predictive and Operandi Computational Catalysis - Recent Advancements for Transition-Metal Chemistry"
December 6th 2022

Prof. Dr. Guntram Rauhut (University Stuttgart, Germany)
"Convergence of series expansions in vibrational structure calculations"
December 1st 2022

Prof. Dr. Roland Wester (University Innsbruck, Austria)
"Elucidating chemical reactions in the gas phase by imaging ion-neutral collisions"
October 13th 2022

Dr. Christopher Stein (University Duisburg Essen, Germany)
"Managing degrees of freedom at interfaces"
October 6th 2022

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Nadja Simeth (Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany)
"Studying the (photo)isomerization pathways of organic photoswitches in a cross-disciplinary approach"
August 9th 2022

Prof. Dr. Ad van der Avoird (Radbound University, Netherlands)
"Hydrogen bonding; the ammonia dimer case"
April 28th 2022




Elisa Brás (U. Coimbra, Portugal)
"Jet-Cooled and Matrix-Isolated Radicals: Monitoring Interactions and Reactions through IR Spectroscopy"
July 20th 2021

Prof. Dr. Joost Wintterlin (LMU, Germany)
"Video and operando STM on catalyst surfaces"
April 29th 2021



Dr. Maria Eugenia Sanz (King's College London, UK)
"Isomers, conformers and non-covalent interactions revealed by rotational spectroscopy"
December 10th 2020

Prof. Dr. Tucker Carrington (Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada)
"Collocation methods for studying the motion of nuclei in molecules"
August 18-19th 2020

Prof. Dr. Sharon Hammes-Schiffer (Yale University, USA)
"Proton-Coupled Electron Transfer in Catalysis and Energy Conversion"
June 22-23rd 2020



Prof. Dr. Cristina Puzzarini (Università di Bologna, Italy)
"Rotational Spectroscopy Meets Quantum Chemistry for Elucidating Astrochemical Challenges"
November 14th 2019

Dr. David Tew (Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Germany)
"Quantum Dynamics on Accurate Electronic Potentials"
November 12th 2019

Prof. Dr. Richard O'Hair (University of Melbourne, Australia)
"Adventures with Mass Spectrometers: Opportunities for Benchmarking; Catalysis Design; Discovering New Reactions; and Probing Reactive Intermediates in Metabolism"
September 30th 2019

Prof. Dr. Yisong Guo (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
"Mechanistic Understanding of Non-Heme Iron Enzymes through the Lens of Spectroscopy"
August 20th 2019

Prof. Dr. Jörg Meyer (Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands)
"Modelling energy dissipation for molecules at surfaces"
July 11th 2019

Prof. Dr. Riccardo Spezia (Sorbonne Université, France)
"Chemical dynamics simulations to understand and predict collision induced dissociation of organic and biological molecules"
April 25th 2019

Prof. Dr. Deborah Lee Crittenden (University of Canterbury, New Zealand)
"How to have your cake and eat it too: New methods for constructing potential energy surfaces and wavefunctions"
April 16th 2019