Award for outstanding research

Henkel has presented the “Laundry & Home Care Research Award 2016” to Dr. Kristin Ganske for her outstanding research at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. The award comes with a 3,000-euro grant. For her thesis, Ganske worked on new synthesis routes for bio-based polymers, which could lead to better stain removal on textiles.

Away with stains
The 31-year-old doctoral candidate in chemistry used cellulose to synthesize so-called cellulose carbamates, which have strong film-forming properties. By choosing cellulose, she opted for the most common organic compound on earth. “The new polymer is not just much more resource-conserving, but also biodegradable,” says Ganske. In the past, these products were partly obtained from non-renewable petrochemical raw materials.
“Dr. Ganske’s work has shown that there are new synthetic approaches to obtaining functional bio-based polymers, which can improve laundry detergents’ washing performance. Her findings are an important building block for the development of more efficient and more resource-conserving detergents,” says Prof. Dr. Thomas Müller-Kirschbaum, Head of Global Research and Development in the Laundry & Home Care business unit.

Supporting young scientists
This was the seventh time that the Laundry & Home Care business unit presented the award. “As a company with its own research activities, supporting the next generation of scientists is very important to us,” says Müller-Kirschbaum. “That’s because scientific excellence is the basis for technical innovation.” At the award ceremony, Ganske presented her research findings to representatives of Henkel’s Research and Development and to the Laundry & Home Care business unit’s Technology Advisory Board – a committee of leading scientists in the fields relevant to the development of detergents and cleaning agents. In particular, Henkel cooperates with these scientists to research and assess new trends.