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discovered_01_2013

PORTRAIT// The HZDR Research Magazine WWW.Hzdr.DE 42 43 // Chemist Sibylle Gemming is a leading HZDR scientist. As of January 2013, she is also a professor at the TU Chemnitz Institute for Physics. For her work, Sibylle Gemming has received one million Euros in funding from the Helmholtz Association's "W2/W3 program for excellent female scientists." _Text . Christine Bohnet Chemistry to physics to materials research Sibylle Gemming is a chemist by training - who earned both her university and Ph.D. degrees at the TU Munich. Her focus has always been on computer-based modeling rather than laboratory science. As a postdoc, she spent four years at the Max Planck Institute for Metal Research in Stuttgart and at SISSA in Trieste. Here she switched to solid state physics. Today, she is working at the Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden- Rossendorf and considers herself a material scientist. Along with her colleagues, she studies molecules and solid state systems at the nanometer scale. In contrast to materials as we know them, these very tiny structures are exhibiting completely new properties that have yet to be studied experimentally and by use of simulation. Gemming is also head of the MEMRIOX Virtual Institute, which has been funded by the Helmholtz Association since October 2011. The scientist is interested in wires, tubes, layers - all in the nanometer range. MEMRIOX - Memory Effects in Resistive Ion-Beam Modified Oxides - links up eight partners from Germany, Switzerland, and the US. The research focus is on passive electronic elements whose resistance can be set using an electric current. The goal is to miniaturize electronic components - in the nanometer range, of course - for a "green" kind of data processing. Good relations with the TU Chemnitz Many years of close collaboration connect the scientist to the TU Chemnitz. As such, she spent three years as a scientific associate at the Institute for Physics prior to earning her habilitation in December 2004 at the TU. In 2005, she received the venia legendi to teach physics. Sibylle Gemming wants to invest the Helmholtz Association's "W2/W3 program for excellent female scientists" funds in staff and equipment: "Our plan is to examine how contacts between different materials can be optimized for energy-efficient electronics or for the generation of renewable energies. We are especially interested in assessing the impact of the smallest changes at an atomic scale on the properties of the entire system. The HZDR's methods are the best premise for this." To name one other of Sibylle Gemming's many activities and jobs: Her role as speaker of the Virtual Institute MEMRIOX and recent completion of an advanced training course in WIRES, Tubes, LAYERS: Sibylle Gemming, Professor at the TU Chemnitz since January 2013, deals with molecules or solid state systems on the nanometer scale. science management at the Helmholtz Management Academy predestine her for an active role in program-oriented funding, the tool used by the Helmholtz Association to finance research and coordinate the different centers' scientific collaboration. To reconcile her work with her family life, Gemming has recently gone on a sabbatical from directing the HZDR's Division of Scaling Phenomena. Through the end of 2014, physicist Artur Erbe will be in charge of the division's roughly 30 employees. "I have always been able to rely completely on the excellent members of my team," Gemming emphasizes. "Only together were we able to build up what we achieved over the last few years." ContaCt _Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research at HZDR Prof. Sibylle Gemming s.gemming@hzdr.de A member of AcademiaNet, the web portal for excellent female scientists www.academia-net.de

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