Shannon Bonke is from Melbourne in Australia, where he was awarded his PhD in Chemistry from Monash University for the thesis "Towards Light Driven Water Splitting".

His former supervisor had some collaborative projects with Alexander Schnegg, who is now research group leader at the MPI CEC, and near the end of his PhD Dr. Bonke visited Alexander Schnegg's former lab in Berlin for a month as part of a joint project.

Dr. Schnegg kindly asked Shannon Bonke to join his group after he finished, and Dr. Bonke worked with him in Berlin while preparing the fellowship proposal and while it was under review. Gratefully, it was successful and Dr. Bonke have now joined CEC: "I am quite passionate about solar fuels and energy conversion so CEC is a perfect place for me to work."

Shannon Bonke brings knowledge of inorganic and electrochemistry to the group, while he aims to expand his knowledge of EPR. Their planned research is to develop methodology for in situ / operando studies that allow EPR characterisation of catalysts for energy conversion reactions. The (rather long) research proposal title is "Towards Mechanistic Understanding of Solar Fuels Electrocatalysts via In Situ Structural Characterisation".

Shannon Bonke was chosen for the <link https: www.humboldt-foundation.de web humboldt-fellowship-postdoc.html external-link-new-window internal link in current>Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers at the end of the year 2017 and is now working in the research group of Dr. Alexander Schnegg.

The Humboldt Foundation promotes academic cooperation between excellent scientists and scholars from abroad and from Germany. A Humboldt Research Fellowship for postdoctoral researchers allows you to carry out long-term research (6-24 months) in Germany. Applicants choose their own topic of research and their academic host.