Melanie Schnell joins CFEL's MPG-ASG

Melanie Schnell joins the Max Planck Advanced Study Group at CFEL as Group Leader for the “Structure and Dynamics of Cold and Controlled Molecules” Group

On October 1^st, 2010 Melanie Schnell joined the Max Planck Advanced Study Group at the Center for Free-Electron Science as a Max Planck Research Group leader. She will set up and lead the Structure and Dynamics of Cold and Controlled Molecules Group of the MPG-ASG.
Melanie Schnell is a physical chemist and molecular physicist with more than 45 peer-reviewed publications. She has earned several fellowships and awards, such as the Akademiestipendium 2005 of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and the Liebig grant of the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie. Furthermore, she is an elected member of the Junge Akademie. In 2004 , she finished her dissertation on intramolecular dynamics in nonrigid molecules using high-resolution rotational spectroscopy and group-theoretical methods. Following a postdoctoral stay at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland, she joined the Department of Molecular Physics at the Fritz-Haber-Institut of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin as a group leader in 2005.
Melanie Schnell’s research exploits the unique possibilities of state-of-the-art molecule-manipulation techniques such as Stark deceleration and conformer selection for high-resolution spectroscopy and molecular dynamics studies, which can shed more light onto the tight relationship between structure and function in molecules. She is interested in conformational isomerizations in particular, which are key processes for molecular recognition, and in intra- and intermolecular dynamics of molecules and molecular complexes in general.