Hydroformylation

Armin Börner studied education and chemistry at the University of Rostock and completed his PhD thesis in the group of Prof. Dr. H. Kristen in 1984. Between 1984 and 1992 he was a scientific co-worker in the field of complex catalysis at the Academia of Science under Prof. Dr. H. Pracejus. After a postdoctoral term in the group of Prof. Dr. H. B. Kagan in Orsay, France, he relocated to the Max-Planck-Group for Asymmetric Catalysis in Rostock in 1993, where he was awarded his professorial research degree (habilitation) in 1995. Since 2000 he has been Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Rostock and head of a research department at the Leibniz-Institute for Catalysis (LIKAT) Rostock. His research focuses on applied homogeneous catalysis and he has published over 250 scientific papers, reviews, book chapters and patents. More than 15 catalytic processes and analytical tools which have been developed in his department are running in a technical scale or have been commercialized.

Robert Franke studied chemistry at Bochum University, Germany. He earned his doctorate degree in 1994 in the field of relativistic quantum chemistry under Prof. Dr. W. Kutzelnigg. After working for a period as a research assistant, he joined the process engineering department of the former Hüls AG in Germany, a predecessor company of Evonik Performance Materials GmbH, in 1998. He is now Director Innovation Management Hydroformylation. He was awarded his professorial research degree (habilitation) in 2002, since when he has taught at the University of Bochum. In 2011 he was made adjunct professor. His research focuses on homogeneous catalysis, process intensification, and computational chemistry. He has published over 150 scientific papers, reviews, book chapters and patents.