Prestigious Kekulé Mobility Fellowship awarded to Nicole Teschmit

The scholarship, named after the German chemist August Kekulé, provides mobility support for exceptional PhD candidates.

Nicole Teschmit working at her laser setup. (Picture: J. Harms/CFEL)

Nicole Teschmit was awarded a prestigious Kekulé Mobility Fellowship from the Chemical Industry Fund (FCI) of the German Chemical Industry Association (Verband der Chemischen Industrie, VCI).

In her PhD work in the Controlled Molecule Imaging Group at the Center for Free-Electron-Laser Science, Nicole Teschmit will develop techniques to prepare samples of cold, isomer separated, controlled beams of large molecules for the investigation of their structure and dynamics. The challenge is to prepare cold samples of intact molecules with high density of these fragile species. Therefore, Nicole will develop and improve advanced vaporization techniques, such as laser desorption of neutral molecules. The resulting cold molecular beams allow strong control over the molecules' motion. Nicole Teschmit will separate the individual conformers of these molecules and align and orient them in space. These samples will be characterized using Coulomb explosion velocity map imaging experiments. Furthermore, the highly controlled samples will provide novel opportunities for the molecular-frame imaging of the dynamics of complex molecules using time-resolved X-ray or electron diffractive imaging.