Award Description: The Walter Thiel Award in Computational and Theoretical Chemistry recognizes an outstanding scientific contribution of a young researcher based in a country affiliated to EuChemS. The award is granted every two years. It includes a prize amount of one thousand Euros, the EuChemS Walter Thiel medal and an invitation to present a feature article on the award winning research in Chemistry – A European Journal.
Walter Thiel was one of the world’s leading European theoretical chemists of the late 20th and early 21st century. He was among those who realized the potential of theoretical and computational chemistry, not only to predict and understand a great variety of phenomena in chemistry, physics and biochemistry, but also to establish the route toward the exploration of new processes and provide the answers to many of the questions that challenge our understanding of the world around us. At the same time, Walter was a great scientist, an outstanding personality with great sensibility and enormous respect for others. It is Walter’s vision of science and his spirit that our Award shall promote.
The EuChemS Walter Thiel Award is sponsored by the Max-Planck-Institute für Kohleforschung, the GDCh, the Swiss Chemical Society, and Chemistry Europe.
Requirements:
• Nominees are looked for who are performing excellent research which led already to outstanding scientific contribution in the broad field of Computational and/or Theoretical Chemistry
• The intention is to promote a young scientist, though no age limit is imposed.
• The nominee should be affiliated with an institution based in a country affiliated to the EuChemS.
Nominations are accepted from people associated with all Member Societies of the EuChemS; especially welcome are those endorsed by several Societies.
Required Documents:
• Maximum two-page Curriculum Vitae of the nominee
• One-page summary of main achievements. This should describe the work done and its significance to the scientific field and should be augmented with few links to make the decision process easier.
• One or more letters of endorsement. The letter(s) of endorsement should include which member societies endorse the candidate (if applicable), and should be no more than one page long.
The Call for Nominations for the 2026 Award is open; the deadline for nominations is Sunday 31st of May 2026. The Nomination Form can be found at the following link.
EuchemS Walter Thiel Award 2022:
The first Call for Nominations ended on May 31st,2022. The Award Ceremony will take place at EuChemS CompChem in Thessaloniki on August 27, 2023, with the laureate presenting a plenary lecture (see www.euchems-compchem.eu/program).
The first announcement of the Award led to 17 excellent nominations. We are delighted to announce the first awardee: Dr. Felix Plasser of Loughborough University (UK).
Since completing his PhD in 2012 at the University of Vienna, Felix’s research has made outstanding contributions to computational chemistry. Working in the field of photochemistry, he studies how molecules interact with light. His work involves the development of computational electronic structure and photodynamics methods. He is particularly well-known for his work on excited-state wavefunctions. The methods developed provide new conceptual information by incorporating ideas from exciton theory, valence bond theory, and excited state aromaticity. The corresponding software (TheoDORE) is freely available and has been downloaded >5000 times by researchers around the world. Felix also contributes to the development of the COLUMBUS code for high-level electronic structure computations and the photodynamics codes Newton-X and SHARC. Felix is also active in the application of these methods at the forefront of current science, and has been working with colleagues applying high-level spectroscopic techniques to fundamental problems in photophysics. His impressive publication record (85 peer-reviewed publications, 5000 citations, h-index of 33) attests to the breadth and high quality of his research and his international recognition.
EuChemS Walter Thiel Award 2024 :
Sandra Luber’s research deals with the development of theoretical methods at the interface of chemistry, biology, physics, and materials science. In particular, approaches derived from quantum mechanics have been in the focus of her work. Together with her team she uses various methods including wavefunction- and density functional theory-based approaches as well as ab initio molecular dynamics, enhanced sampling methods, Quantum Monte Carlo, and quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics. Applications encompass a broad range of systems ranging from (bio-)molecules and functional coordination compounds to condensed phase systems and solar light-driven processes.
Sandra Luber has been honored with a number of awards. In 2017, she has, for instance, received the Clara Immerwahr Award (first theoretician awarded) and she has been the first female scientist to obtain the Hans G. A. Hellmann Award and the Robin Hochstrasser Young Investigator Award (first woman awarded). Additionally, she is the recipient of the Werner Prize 2018 of the Swiss Chemical Society, the Jochen Block Prize 2019 of the German Catalysis Society, the Carl Duisberg Memorial Prize 2019 of the German Chemical Society and the Coblentz Award 2021 from the Coblentz Society. In 2024 Sandra Luber was also awarded with the Philip J. Stephens Award and den 2024 Early Career Award in Theoretical Chemistry of the ACS.