Sonja Herres-Pawlis
Chair of Bioinorganic Chemistry and Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, RWTH Aachen University (North Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen, Germany)
Sonja Herres-Pawlis received her Doctor degree (2005) from the University of Paderborn under the supervision of Professor G. Henkel. The thesis topic was bioinorganic copper-dioxygen chemistry. She moved as Postdoc fellow to Stanford University, working with Prof. T.D.P. Stack. After moving back to Paderborn, dr. Herres-Pawlis started her independent work. In 2009 she moved to the Technical University of Dortmund to work at her habilitation on sustainable polymerization catalysts together with Prof. K. Jurkschat. In 2011, dr. Herres-Pawlis moved to an associate professor position for coordination chemistry at LMU Munich. In 2012 she finished the Habilitation theses at TU Dortmund. At LMU Munich, Sonja worked in bioinorganic chemistry and sustainable polymerization catalysis. In 2014, she received two calls for chairs of bioinorganic chemistry at TU Dortmund and RWTH Aachen. Since January 2015, Sonja Herres-Pawlis works in Aachen. She received several fellowships (for PhD period and Postdoc period) and several awards, the most important in 2011, when Sonja Herres-Pawlis won the Innovation Prize of the state of Northrhine-Westphalia. In 2014, the Arnold-Sommerfeld Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2022, dr. Herres-Pawlis was elected as Chemistry Europe Fellow.
Sonja Herres-Pawlis current research interests lie in the area of bioinorganic and coordination chemistry, with strong emphasis on copper chemistry for oxygen and electron transfer, C-C coupling reactions but also atom transfer radical polymerization and lactide polymerization with zinc complexes. She has published over 200 original papers and 4 patents.
