Professorship appointment at Tianjin Polytechnic University

Dr. Gui-Rong Zhang at the research group of Prof. Bastian Etzold has recently been appointed as a full professor at Tianjin Polytechnic University (Tianjin, China). He will start his work at the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering in 2021.

“We will certainly miss him strongly in our group, but are very happy and proud of his success”, said Prof. Etzold. “He made a major achievement in his career, which is a great success and underlines his excellence in academy.”

After studying chemistry at Tsinghua University (Beijing, China), Dr. Zhang received his PhD degree in physical chemistry in 2013. After a short stay at Institute of Metal Research (Chinese Academy of Science), he moved to Germany working with Prof. Etzold as a postdoc at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg and then TU Darmstadt. In 2016, he was promoted to a group leader, heading the electrochemistry group at AK Etzold. His research focuses mainly on the innovation of functional materials for electrochemical applications including fuel cells, batteries, electrosynthesis and paper-based microfluidics. A featuring work is involving on engineering the microenvironment of electrochemical interfaces using ionic liquids, which leads to several influential publications in this field (Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2016, 55, 2257; ACS Catal. 2018, 8, 8244; ACS Catal. 2019, 9, 8682; Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2020, 59, 18095).

“I really enjoy the stay in TU Darmstadt”, said Dr. Zhang. “I appreciate having had such an opportunity to work with so many nice colleagues, who show great professionalism and enthusiasm in research. For sure I would like to keep in active contact with the colleagues in TU Darmstadt in the future.”

We wish our colleague Gui-Rong Zhang all the best for his future and a good start of his new lab.