Neudecker Group

News

October 16th, 2026

Our former PhD student Sourabh, now a postdoc in the group of Ashlie Martini at UC Merced, has contributed to a paper by the group of Anne Staubitz on helical dinaphthothiophenes. It turns out these compounds have some interesting optical properties: Quite atypically, BN substitution does not improve the fluorescence quantum yield. Thanks, everyone, for the nice collaboration.

September 24th, 2026

Paula defends her Bachelor's thesis and is now B. Sc. Paula Vosteen. Congratulations, Paula!

August 20th, 2026

Pia defends her Bachelor's thesis and is now B. Sc. Pia Mittelbach. Congratulations, Pia!

August 10th, 2026

Meenu starts her research internship in our group, in which she will investigate chemical systems in oriented external electric fields (OEEFs). Welcome to our group! We thank MAPEX for funding Meenu’s research stay.

July 6th, 2026

Oliver begins his research internship in our group, in which he will develop a machine learning approach for the simulation of polymers. Welcome, Oliver!

June 1st, 2026

Noah begins his PhD project in our group. He will develop quantum chemical methods for simulating chemical systems under high hydrostatic pressure. Welcome, Noah, we’re looking forward to our joint work on exciting projects.

May 28th, 2026

Konstantin begins working on his Bachelor’s thesis in our group. In collaboration with Marvin, he will investigate bond breaking events in mechanochemistry using various analysis tools. Welcome, Konstantin.

May 26th, 2026

In their latest publication, Nico and Felix present an independent tessellation routine for the GOSTSHYP and X-HCFF pressure simulation methods in Q-Chem. The routine enables a robust combination of both approaches with implicit solvation models, thereby stabilizing zwitterionic states and reproducing experimental Raman spectra and reaction pathways under pressure.

May 19th, 2026

In his new paper, Alexander investigates spiropyran-doped PMMA, a mechanochromic polymer. By combining quantum chemical simulations with atomistic and coarse-grained Molecular Dynamics, he reproduces experimental onset strains and shows that spiropyran is activated most readily in the central part of the polymer chains. Thanks to Lucio Colombi Ciacchi for this great collaboration, and congrats, Alexander, to your paper!

May 18th, 2026

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft will fund the Collaborative Research Center Polymer Mechanochemistry, which will be located at RWTH Aachen. Together with Prof. Dr. Christoph Bannwarth and Dr.-Ing. Khiêm Vu Ngoc we will work on two sub-projects dealing with the design of new mechanophores and the multiscale modeling of mechanochromic polymers, respectively. We are looking forward to these exciting collaborative projects in this highly promising research area.