International scholarship holders join research group

Deborah Turetsky from the USA got her scholarship in the RISE-program (Research Internships in Science and Engineering) of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and Roman Kolevatov from Israel, who got his scholarship from the NRW-Nahost-program. A second RISE student already granted to the group, could not take the scholarship this year due to personal reasons.

Both interns will join the PhD students Dominik Büchner and Markus Witzler, who work on novel scaffold materials for bone regeneration (projects „TestMedgO“ and „HybridKEM“).

Deborah Turetsky studies “Biomedical Engineering” in her last year at Northwestern University near Chicago, IL, USA and came out top of more than 10 applicants from the USA, Canada, UK and Ireland. Back home, she worked on integrating metal-organic frameworks to fabrics in order to block warfare agents. During her ten-week’s stay in Rheinbach, she supports Dominik Büchner on his research and works on doping calcium phosphates (the mineral found in bones) with other elements such as magnesium or silicon, in order to improve their properties as artificial scaffold material for bone regeneration.

Roman Kolevatov studies “Chemistry, Engineering and Material Sciences” in his final semester at Tel Aviv University, Israel, a program quite comparable to the H-BRS program “Chemie mit Materialwissenschaften” in Rheinbach. He has experience in 3D-printing hydrogels for improving the in vitro-fertilization process. In his 12 weeks in Rheinbach, he works closely with Markus Witzler and investigates polysaccharide-based hydrogel systems that can be used for sustaining drug release in tissue engineering.

When asked, why they applied for their scholarships, Debbie says that she wanted to have a first-hand experience of German science and engineering and the projects really appealed to her. Roman adds: “I wanted to experience another country`s scientific culture and Germany is a leading country in Chemistry and Material Science research.”

Apart from working in the lab, both use the opportunity to get to know German and European culture and of course explore the region of Bonn and Cologne.