BRAINS PhD students win poster prizes at MüSIM23 2nd Münster Symposium on Intelligent Matter

MüSIM 2023 Young Researcher Awards

2nd Münster Symposium on Intelligent Matter


Hazal Koyuncu

Hazal is a PhD candidate in the research group of Albert Wong. Her PhD studies are focusing on controlling feedback loops using spatial organizations in chemical reaction networks (CRNs). She has interest in designing reactive surfaces in microfluidic systems to mimic the influence of surface-interface reactions on biochemical processes. In this particular work, she designed a platform consisting a competing activation network, which is regulated by a chemical feedback at the liquid-surface interface, in which one of the activation processes is immobilized on the surfaces in a microfluidic channel. Outcomes of this system allowed for encoding read and write operations using reactive surfaces, providing the potential to bestow CRNs with the capacity of molecular information processing.

Alessandro Borrini

Alessandro is a PhD candidate in HMOE group. His studies focus on the investigation of dynamic molecular switches whose application can be found in neuromorphic computing. He has interest in design, synthesis and electrical characterization of molecular tunneling junctions that can mimic synaptic behavior. In this particular work, he demonstrates that proton coupled electron transfer (PCET) is a promising way to induce plasticity in molecular junctions. The peculiar mechanism allows the tunneling junction to exhibit Pavlovian learning and be configured to perform all the logic gates required for deep learning.