Switzerland
I am responsible for the global technology management of the silicone adhesives and sealants within Sika. I am coordinating the developments and projects on global level, with manufacturing and RnD sites in CN, US, KR, JP, UK and continental Europe. I am leading and work in interdisciplinary teams developing the silicone business on corporate level with focus on investments, and site expansion projects, on product development and strategic projects. Before that, I studied the synthesis and characterization of novel main group cations and complexes as a postdoc in the Burford group at the University of Victoria. My PhD studies were performed at ETH Zürich on low valent phosphorus chemistry in the group of Prof. Grützmacher. For my master thesis, I went to Bristol, working with Prof. Manners, one of the great minds in metal containing polymers, on the dehydrocoupling of main group hydrides. Insight into silica surface modifications (Copéret group) and sorption enhanced methanation of carbon dioxide on a nickel catalyst (Züttel group) equipped me with the fundamental skills in solid state chemistry.
◆ Global coordination of the silicone technology within the company ◆ Project management (product development, investment projects and strategic projects) ◆ Ideation and support for patent applications ◆ Sales and marketing support ◆ Public and internal presentations
◆ Development of new silicone adhesives (1C, 2C-RTVs) ◆ Project management (adhesive development to rollout) ◆ Ideation and support for patent applications ◆ Sales and marketing support ◆ Public and internal presentations ◆ Safety officer for the silicone team ◆ Internal collaborations to push silicone hybrid materials
◆ Development of new silicone adhesives (1C, 2C-RTVs) ◆ Project management (adhesive development to rollout) ◆ Ideation and support for patent applications ◆ Sales and marketing support ◆ Public and internal presentations and meetings ◆ Trained safety officer active for the silicone R&D department ◆ Internal collaborations to push silicone hybrid materials
At the University of Victoria I developed new methods to generate main group cations which not only exhibit a cationic charge but an electronically accessible lone pair. In this context a flexible multidentate tris(benzoimidazol)amine ligand has been introduced which allowed for the successful oxidation of a tetrel(II) dications and phosphorus(III) trications to access new Lewis acids.
During my PhD, I studied the reactivity of the low valent phosphorus precursor Na(OCP), a powerful starting material for organo-phosphorus compounds. I developed a new scale-up synthesis using sodium, red phosphorus and ethyl carbonate to isolate several hundred grams of Na(OCP) in one batch. This allowed for an in depth study of the OCP-anion in combination with numerous electrophiles, yielding unprecedented heterocycles such as hetero-substituted diphospholes, tetraphosphanes with amine functionalities and a phosphorus analogue of cyanuric acid.
Hemp fibers for textile applications
Zeolite based nickel catalys for the methanation of carbondioxide