In the last few years, we had the pleasure of visits by a number of distinguished guest scientists and friends:

• Stig Rune Sellvaag (Oslo University)

Stig is a Ph.D. student in Claus Nielsen's group at Oslo university working on atmospheric chemistry. He is interested in the atmospheric oxidation of HFC's and their products. He first visited Kiel in September 2003 to do product measurements after photolysis of trifluoroacetaldehyde and other fluorinated carbonyl compounds using our FTIR spectrometer, experiments which are complementary to the work he is doing in Claus group in Oslo. Thanks to support by the Nordic Network for Chemical Kinetics (NoNeCK), Stig will be going to Kiel regularly in the next couple of months.

• Dr. Yuanqing Guo (Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Yuanqing Guo received his Ph. D. from Wuhan in early 2001. His thesis was concerned with MIR-LMR spectra of NO and NO₂. He came to Kiel in July 2001 and brought our FIR-LMR spectrometer back into business. Another project Yuanqing has been working on was cavity-ring-down spectroscopy of Si containing radicals and the kinetics of SiH₂ reactions. He developed a new quantitative method to include the laser bandwidth effects in the analysis of simultaneous chemical kinetics and ringdown decay profiles.
 
• Dr. Jie Wei (Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Jie Wei has been awarded a Humboldt research fellowship to work in Kiel for one year starting in April 2001.  He was involved in our unimolecular dynamics experiments, especially the investigations of product state distributions from the quantum state specific unimolecular dissociation of, e.g., HCO and DCO using time of flight mass spectrometry and velocity map ion imaging. He also performed new experiments on H and D atom eliminiation from pyrrole and pyrrole-d₁ which appear to proceed via conical interesections. His results shed a new light on the radiationless deactivation processes of heteroaromatic molecules of biological interest, including the nucelobases.
 
• Dr. Vladimir Markov (Russian Academy of Sciences, Nizhnii Novgorod)

Vladimir has been a frequent visitor to Kiel. He has previously been working with A. Guarnieri and H. Mäder. He joined us in the second quarter of 2001, working with our Molecular Beam - Fourier-Transform Microwave (MB - FTMW) spectrometer with the intention to look at spectra of free radicals, namely CCl₂, CFCl, CHCl, and CHBr. Vladimir helped to improve the detection sensitivity of our spectrometer. He will be back in Kiel in 2002.

• Dr. Helmut Beckers (Inorganic Chemistry, University of Wuppertal)

With Helmut Beckers, we investigated small unstable inorganic molecules,which can be generated by flash pyrolysis. Precursor molecules were synthesized by Helmut and brought to Kiel, where we tried to record and analyze FTMW spectra. This project was supported by the DFG-Schwerpunkt "Si chemistry".

• Dr. Gleb Eshchenko (Institute of Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow )

Gleb has been visiting Kiel from January 2001 until the end of 2002. He was interested in the kinetics of elementary reactions in the NOx-reburning mechanism by time-resolved direct techniques. His experiments involved excimer laser flash photolysis of CH₂CO in a tubular flow reactor coupled to a mass spectrometer. The challenge will be to reach high temperatures up to 1300 K. He has also been involved in our work on silane reactions.
 
• Dr. Kristina Imrik (Chemical Research Centre, Budapest)

Kristina visited Kiel in early 2000, doing experiments on the kinetics of oxygen containing hydrocarbon radicals (CH₃CO, CH₃COCH₂) and on the photodissociation mechanism of acetyl acetone.  Her visit was part of our ongoing collaboration under the auspices of the Hungarian-German Intergovernmental Science and Technology Cooperation Programme.
 
• Dr. Akos Benscura (Chemical Research Centre, Budapest)

Akos spent a period of six weeks in Kiel (November to December of 1999).  He was involved in our studies of the SiH₃ oxidation kinetics with the laser photolysis - flow tube - quadrupole mass spectrometer combination. He also assisted in the set-up of a long path UV absorption cell.  Akos came back to Kiel in 2000.
 
• Dr. Bernd Abel (Universität Göttingen)

Bernd spent a few days in Kiel in the summer of 1999 for the preparation of a microwave - UV double resonance experiment on NO₂.
 
• Prof. Dr. Sandor Dobe (Chemical Research Centre, Budapest)

Sandor has been a dear friend and frequent visitor since the good old Göttingen days.  He is becoming a frequent visitor to Kiel now, thanks to the Hungarian-German Intergovernmental Science and Technology Cooperation Programme. Our mutual interests are in the study of the oxidation kinetics and dynamics of oxygen containing hydrocarbon radicals with relevance to atmospheric chemistry and combustion.  Sandor has last been in Kiel in June 1999.
 
• Dr. Erko Jalviste (Tartu University, Estonia)

Erko is a regular visitor to Kiel. He first joined us as a Humboldt Research Fellow.  He spent one and a half years in Kiel in 1997/1998, another half a year in early 2001, and a few monsths in 2004.  He worked on the laser induced fluorescence of jet-cooled indazole.  He successfully measured the excitation and dispersed fluorescence spectra of indazole monomer and indazole-water complexes and managed to analyze the spectra with the help of ab initio calculations.  He had the courage and he had the patience to sort through long series of spectra - which at first glance looked quite horrible, but in the end were very rewarding.  Erko has recently carried out hole-burning experiments on the dimers and trimers of indazole and various complexes of indazole with water and now wants to measure REMPI spectra. We also hope to do SEP and femtosecond measurements on indazole and the indazole-water complexes in the future to look at the tautomerization dynamics.
 
• Prof. Dr. Mike Pilling (University of Leeds)

Mike spent one week in Kiel during the "Kieler Woche" sailing events in 1997.  He gave talks on atmospheric chemistry and on unimolecular reactions.