Melanie is a Professor for Physical Chemistry at the CAU Kiel and a leading scientist at DESY. Her passion is to investigate complex molecules and molecular complexes, with a main interest in astrochemistry, chirality, and intermolecular interactions. Melanie studied chemistry at the Universities of Hannover and Bonn and performed her Diploma research in Theoretical Chemistry with Sigrid D. Peyerimhoff at the Universität Bonn. After her PhD research with Jens-Uwe Grabow in Hannover, where she had the pleasure to use one of the best microwave cavity spectrometers in the world, she did a postdoc with Jon T. Hougen at NIST on group theory. Fascinated by the possibilities that electric fields and the Stark effect offer for slowing and controlling neutral molecules, she then joined the vibrant Department of Molecular Physics at the Fritz-Haber-Institut in beautiful Berlin, working with Gerard Meijer. During that time, her two daughters were born (*2007 and *2009). In 2010, she took the opportunity to start her own independent group in Hamburg on the Bahrenfeld campus supported by the Max Planck society, centered around broadband and high-resolution molecular spectroscopy. In 2017, she was appointed Full Professor (W3) at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel in a joint appointment as a leading scientist at DESY.
She serves on several selection committees and advisory boards and as a reviewer for scientific journals and research foundations and is the co-coordinator of the Center for Molecular Water research in Hamburg. Her recent awards and distinctions include an ERC Starting grant (2014), the Akademiepreis für Chemie der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen (2015), the Bernstein junior award (2018), and DESY’s Björn-Wiik-Preis (2020).
When not at work (or in home office), Melanie can be found playing great board games with her kids, enjoying her cute cats and rabbits, transforming her jungle garden into more of a garden than a jungle, and reading books of different kinds.
A full scientific CV can be downloaded here and for a complete publication list, please click here.
Contact Information:
| E-Mail: | melanie.schnell@desy.de |
| Phone: | +49 (0)40 8998 6240 |
| Location: | 25f / 260 |
