News

“Safer Materials” and ‘ELCH’, two former LOEWE focal points of the University of Kassel, were represented as exhibitors at the stand of the Hessian Ministry of Science and Research, Art and Culture with their follow-up projects. 

The Department of Plastics Technology at the University of Kassel, under whose leadership the LOEWE project “Safer Materials” was funded by the HMWK from 2015 to 12018, had a very special attraction: a blue Carrera track that runs on electrically conductive smart plastic training belts! An innovative development by the Kassel University spin-off STRAFFR, in which functions are integrated into the plastic material in order to save natural resources, among other things. A key research area of the “BiTWerk - Biological Transformation of Technical Materials” science cluster.

In addition, the department presented its activities on bioplastics as part of the joint research project “BeBio2” and prepared a touch box with which the materials from which these plastics are produced or processed at the IfW could be explored. “BeBio2”, led by the University of Kassel and with cooperation partners from various research institutes, builds on ‘Safer Materials’, which dealt with how materials such as metal, plastic or concrete can become more resistant and reliable even at their performance limits and under external influences.

The Collaborative Research Center (CRC) “Extreme Light for the Analysis and Control of Molecular Chirality (ELCH)”, which was funded as a LOEWE research project from 2013 to 2016, presented a laser experiment at the HMWK stand. With ELCH, a research center was established at the University of Kassel in collaboration with other Hessian universities, which aims to gain a microscopic and quantum-mechanical understanding of chiral molecules in the gas phase. With the help of light, ELCH addresses the entire molecular system consisting of electrons and nuclei and creates a unique light-driven gas-phase laboratory for physics on chiral molecules.

For the scientists from Kassel, the Hessentag was a great opportunity to present their research to visitors as part of the presentation by the Hessian Ministry of Science and Research, Art and Culture and to engage in conversation with them.