PhD Award in water chemistry of the Society of Water Chemistry

- supported by the Walter Kölle Foundation -

The Society of Water Chemistry of the German Chemical Society (GDCh) has awarded the water chemistry PhD Award annually since 1992. The prize recognizes outstanding dissertations that have made significant contributions to the advancement of a water chemistry topic and have received an overall grade of "very good" or better. The award includes a certificate and €1,500 in prize money provided by the Walter Kölle Foundation. The award ceremony traditionally takes place during the Society of Water Chemistry's annual conference, "WASSER." A committee appointed by the Division Board decides on the award.

Submission deadline: October 31, 2025

Objective
The Society of Water Chemistry Division of the German Chemical Society (GDCh) awards the water chemistry PhD Award once a year – sponsored by the Walter Kölle Foundation – to recognize an outstanding dissertation that makes an important contribution to the further development of a water chemistry topic.

The price
The award comes with a certificate and a cash prize of €1,500, sponsored by the Walter Kölle Foundation. The prize will be presented at the WASSER 2026 annual conference, which will take place in Kiel from May 11-13, 2026. The awardee will be invited to present their award-winning work in a scientific lecture during the Conference . The conference costs will be borne by the Division. A committee appointed by the Division Board will decide on the award.

nomination
Nominations are generally made by the academic supervisor; self-nominations are expressly excluded. The doctorate was completed after November 1, 2023, and before October 31, 2025 (examination date). The dissertation was rated with an overall grade of "very good" or better. All nominations must include the following documents:

 

• Nomination letter from the academic supervisor
• At least one further reference (preferably doctoral reports and grades of the reports)
• Summary of the dissertation (max. 3 pages)
• Doctoral certificate
• complete dissertation
• publications relevant to the dissertation
• Short CV in tabular form including contact details (email address) and list of publications, patents and conference contributions

submission
Please send your proposal by email and summarized in a PDF file to the GDCh Office for the attention of Maike Fries.

The PhD Award in water chemistry was awarded to Dr. Jonathan Zweigle on 26 May 2025 at WASSER 2025 in Münster:

"[...] in recognition of his outstanding dissertation entitled "Characterization and Identification of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in the Environment and Consumer Products via High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry and Oxidative Conversion," completed in the working group of Prof. Dr. Christian Zwiener at the University of Tübingen. In his dissertation, Dr. Zweigle made significant progress in the development of analytical screening methods using high-resolution mass spectrometry and the identification of PFAS in products and environmental samples. The approaches developed by Dr. Zweigle were implemented in the open-source tool "PF∆Screen," which offers the scientific community a PFAS-optimized workflow for data analysis of HRMS data. Furthermore, Dr. Zweigle successfully further developed the PFAS sum parameter TOP assay in PhotoTOP, thereby not only circumventing problems of the TOP assay but also characterizing fluorinated side-chain polymers in solid samples."