Today we will present Stefanie Hauber. She attended the 3rd meeting of the Young Crystallographers in september in Aachen. In the poster session she presented her theme Effect of ZrO2 and Y2O3 on glass-ceramics as sealing materials and was awarded with a prize. Below she will tell us about herself and her experiences.
How is your education connected to the work you presented? / How did you end up in your theme of work?
I studied geoscience/mineralogy and got to know this way different analytical methods and tools. Then, in my master thesis, I examined already industrially fabricated glasses mass-spectroscopically. I found glasses very exciting and so I applied in this direction and I got a related postgraduate position. I never dealt with fuel cells before, but it is for sure an interesting theme.
What is the most interesting part or fact about your work for you personally
This is definitely the applicability. I am not just busy with the research of glass, glass ceramics and chemical analytics, but also with the specific application of the developed materials in the high temperature fuel cell. The concrete destination in view, the actual purpose of the research, is very motivating for me.
If you get the opportunity: what other theme would you like to work on
Batteries and solar cells. The fields of alternative drives and regenerative energies is simply promising and there is still a lot of potential for improvement.
Your work seems to consist of practical and theoretical work likewise. Which one is more challenging / interesting?
That is not at all that easy to answer. Practical work is for me always slightly more interesting, although you cannot get very far without theoretical knowledge, of course. But the pracitce can be very challenging as well. You certainly need a lot of patience and you have to be able to motivate yourself, if an experiment does not work out or the machines develop a life of their own ;-)
What advice would you give to other young scientists?
Never lose sight of your objective! Day in day out of the univeristy or the institute you often get into a rut/a routine and before you realise it, the 3 years of doctoral thesis (or 6 months of master theses) have already passed by and nothing is done yet. So keep going!