Germany is a European leader when it comes to registering patents in the field of green hydrogen. The DAAD invites doctoral students and postdocs from the European Research Area (ERA) and other eligible countries to take the Green Hydrogen Research Tour, giving them the chance to an exchange with colleagues at renowned German research institutes and with entrepreneurs.

When Ruchi Gupta discovered the DAAD Green Hydrogen Research Tour on LinkedIn last year, she was interested immediately. “I was curious and found it really fascinating,” recalls the Indian energy and environmental scientist. “So I applied.” 

Gupta has been focusing on renewable energies, green hydrogen and decarbonisation for a long time now. After graduating with a master’s from TERI School of Advanced Studies in New Delhi, which specialises in sustainable development, she worked as an advisor to the Indian government before moving to Switzerland to do her PhD at the University of Geneva. For the past two years, she has been a senior researcher in the international energy and climate team at the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO) in Brussels. “To be honest, when I got the e-mail saying I’d been selected for the tour, I didn’t have any clear idea of what awaited me,” says Gupta. “The tour exceeded my expectations from the outset. I learnt a great deal and was impressed by the enthusiasm and openness I experienced in Germany.”

Introduction to concrete fields of application

Ruchi Gupta is one of around 20 doctoral students and postdocs who took part in the Green Hydrogen Research Tour in September 2023. It was the first tour of its kind to be organised by the DAAD. Now the application phase is beginning for the second research tour, which will take place in September 2024. “The response to last year’s tour was very good,” says Fangfang Xu-Suhren, who coordinates the programme ERA Fellowships – Green Hydrogen (GH2) at the DAAD. “We have 22 places on the tour again this year and are hoping to receive lots of applications.”

The tour participants spend a week visiting leading research institutions and universities in Germany that are active in the field of green hydrogen. The group also visits companies, giving participants the chance to learn about concrete fields of application. “It’s a great opportunity to find out about the latest technological developments in Germany in a short space of time and to engage in exchange with researchers and practitioners at universities, non-university research institutions, companies and joint research projects,” explains Xu-Suhren. 

While the first tour in 2023 focused on research institutes and companies in Western Germany, the 2024 tour will explore the East of the country, with visits to research institutes and universities in Chemnitz, Freiberg, Dresden, Cottbus, Potsdam, and Berlin. “The idea is to visit two institutions a day, each with a different research focus, so that we can cover a broad spectrum of activities in terms of research and technological application,” explains Laura Méndez Prencke, who organises the tour at the DAAD.
 

Valuable networking

“Every day was full of surprises,” says Ruchi Gupta, describing her experience of the first tour. “I clearly remember how exciting and very well-organised it was. During the one week we spent travelling, we were all looking forward to the next day. We got so much new information and were able to forge important professional and personal contacts. That was really great, and I would definitely recommend the Green Hydrogen Research Tour to other researchers and experts working in this field.” 

Muhammad Sohail Riaz also participated in the first tour in September 2023. “It was a great experience,” he recalls. “The tour was very good and an opportunity to gain an insight into which research institutes and companies there are in Germany in this field and how they collaborate. That was interesting, and we saw that Germany is currently a leader in the field of green hydrogen in Europe.” Riaz completed a master’s degree in chemistry in Pakistan and subsequently did a PhD at Peking University in China. For the past year and a half, he has been researching water electrolysis as a means of producing green hydrogen at the University of Galway in Ireland.
 

Exchange in working groups

After the research tour, all participants are given the chance to join the working groups that the DAAD offers fellows of its ERA Fellowships – Green Hydrogen programme. “The working groups are a forum in which experts and fellows have an opportunity to discuss different topics,” explains Laura Méndez Prencke, who also coordinates the working groups. “When we were asked whether we wanted to join the working groups, I said yes immediately,” explains Muhammad Sohail Riaz. “This way of fostering collaboration is a really great initiative, a win-win situation.”

Indeed, all the participants in the 2023 research tour decided to get involved in the working groups, Alina Madalina Darabut included. “We mainly arrange online meetings to present our work to the members of other working groups,” explains the chemical engineer, who graduated with a degree in Valencia in Spain and is now doing her doctorate at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University Prague. A visit to the Hydrogen Technology Expo Europe in Hamburg is also planned. “For me, the network of people, the involvement in the working groups and the potential for future collaborations are another valuable benefit of the research tour,” says Darabut. “I am very grateful for this experience and look forward to making lasting connections in the coming years. I cannot recommend the programme enough.”

Verena Kern (23. Mai 2024)

Applications for the Green Hydrogen Research Tour from 15 to 20 September 2024 can be submitted until 17 June.