Ayoub Laghrissi© La­ghris­si

When Eras­mus opens doors

von Lena Kuhn

Alt­hough he has yet to re­cei­ve his cer­ti­fi­ca­te, Ayoub La­ghris­si can soon call hims­elf a doc­tor. He wrote his the­sis at the In­sti­tu­te of Ma­te­ri­al and Sur­face Tech­no­lo­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ap­plied Sci­en­ces. “I de­fen­ded it in Fe­bru­ary. I still don’t have the right to call mys­elf a doc­tor, as I have not yet re­cei­ved my final cer­ti­fi­ca­te. But If an­yo­ne cal­led me a doc­tor, that would be okay,” he jokes. The for­mer Eras­mus stu­dent from the Uni­ver­si­té Mo­ham­med V de Rabat came to Kiel for his Mas­ter’s (stu­dies) in 2016 via the Eras­mus+ In­ter­na­tio­nal pro­gram that al­lows for an ex­chan­ge beyond the Eu­rope­an bor­ders. This pro­ject is tar­ge­ted at stu­dents in the hig­her sta­ges of their edu­ca­ti­on, eit­her in their Mas­ter’s or right after their Mas­ter’s de­gree, or if they are loo­king to  carry out doc­to­ral/post-gra­dua­te work.

“A team from the FH came to my uni­ver­si­ty, pre­sen­ted the pro­jects and then selec­ted a few stu­dents to take part in the ex­chan­ge,” Ayoub says. In June 2016, he first came to Ger­many. The plan was to stay for a year, then to go back to Moroc­co or so­me­whe­re else. “But in that year, Pro­fes­sor Es-Souni said I could fi­nish my PhD in Ger­many, if I wan­ted to,” he re­mem­bers. Prof. Es-Souni ar­ran­ged for Ayoub to join a pro­ject and took care of fi­nan­cing it.

“I was doing my PhD and at the same time I was working as a Wis­sen­schaft­li­cher Mit­ar­bei­ter for the For­schungs- and Ent­wick­lungs-GmbH.” This work was also in­ter­na­tio­nal. “I was working on a pro­ject bet­ween Kiel in Ger­many and Sønder­borg in Den­mark.” This was to fi­nan­ce his life in Kiel, while si­mul­ta­neous­ly working on his PhD. “To me, this offer was re­al­ly nice. So I stayed in Kiel and star­ted working on this pro­ject and on my the­sis.”

When asked about the con­tent of his the­sis, Ayoub gets very ex­ci­ted. “It was about the syn­the­sis of noble metal ca­ta­lysts, so-cal­led nano-ca­ta­lysts, in the ap­pli­ca­ti­on of fuel to pro­du­ce hy­dro­gen and then source clean en­er­gy from said hy­dro­gen.” The de­mand for en­er­gy is high and will li­kely rise. “Eve­r­yo­ne is try­ing to chan­ge how we can pro­du­ce en­er­gy from hy­dro­gen.” This sub­s­tan­ce, howe­ver, is so­me­what rare. “Pure hy­dro­gen is not eve­r­y­whe­re. But in com­pounds, it is in water, in me­tha­nol, or for­mic acid.” Where to find it is easy. But to ac­cess the en­er­gy within the hy­dro­gen is the tri­cky part. “Con­ver­ting the che­mi­cal en­er­gy from the hy­dro­gen into elec­tri­cal en­er­gy,” is the ans­wer. This can be done via elec­tro­che­mis­try. And while it sounds easy on paper, it is not so easy in rea­li­ty. “This pro­cess re­qui­res elec­tro­des that are based on noble me­tals. They are re­al­ly ex­pen­si­ve,” he ex­plains. “They are cal­led noble for so­me­thing.” He laughs. Noble could mean ex­pen­si­ve. In che­mi­cal terms, it means so­me­thing else; they are slow to react or be­co­me oxi­di­zed. “The idea of my the­sis is to think of some stra­te­gies to re­du­ce the con­tent of noble me­tals. I am using nano-struc­tu­res to re­du­ce the load of cost­ly ma­te­ri­als. You could also try to com­bi­ne noble me­tals with chea­per me­tals. It would also be pos­si­ble to re­crea­te the struc­tu­re of noble me­tals with na­n­odes or na­notu­bes.”

Also he fo­cu­sed on the source of hy­dro­gen. “Water is eve­r­y­whe­re, and for this use you can use sea­wa­ter, not only the water we drink.” To pro­du­ce hy­dro­gen, the two com­po­nents of the water mole­cu­le need to be split. This has been a tried-and-tested me­thod for a long time. “But the thing is ef­fici­en­cy. The ef­fici­en­cy of cur­rent ap­pa­ra­tus­es to do that is not that high and the ma­te­ri­als used cost a lot.” To solve this, he tried to use elec­tro­che­mis­try.

Since a PhD at a Uni­ver­si­ty of Ap­plied Sci­en­ces is not pos­si­ble wit­hout a uni­ver­si­ty, he col­la­bo­ra­ted with Pro­fes­sor Fau­pel from the Chris­ti­an-Al­brechts-Uni­ver­si­ty in Kiel. “All the work was done in the FH with Pro­fes­sor Es-Souni. The final de­fence was done by Prof. Fau­pel”, Ayoub ex­plains. “This sys­tem is uni­que to Ger­many”, he finds.

After al­most five years in Ger­many, Ayoub no­ti­ced a lot of dif­fe­ren­ces in the way uni­ver­si­ty and stu­dies work in Ger­many com­pa­red to his uni­ver­si­ty in Rabat, the ca­pi­tol of Moroc­co. “It’s com­ple­te­ly dif­fe­rent,” he sums up: “In Ger­many, stu­dents at­tend lec­tu­res, ask ques­ti­ons and have a dis­cus­sion with the pro­fes­sor. But they don’t write much down.” This is the op­po­si­te to his ex­pe­ri­ence in Moroc­co. Lo­sing focus du­ring a lec­tu­re was de­tri­men­tal. “You wrote down eve­r­y­thing the pro­fes­sor said and un­der­stan­ding is to be done after the lec­tu­re,” he ex­plains. “If you wan­ted to do both, un­der­stan­ding and wri­ting, you would need a lot of focus.” Ano­ther big dif­fe­rence lays in the way re­se­arch is con­duc­ted. “Un­for­tu­n­a­te­ly, in Moroc­co, the go­vern­ment does not pro­vi­de a lot of money for re­se­arch. There aren’t a lot of fa­ci­li­ties for re­se­arch.” Alt­hough this has re­cent­ly chan­ged, there are still not enough pos­si­bi­li­ties to fa­ci­li­ta­te all the PhD stu­dents. The­re­fo­re, a lot of re­se­arch is con­duc­ted theo­re­ti­cal­ly. “You see, I am working in ma­te­ri­al sci­ence. I need to pre­pa­re things, I need to test them, I need to chan­ge things up and so on.” Doing this only in si­mu­la­ti­ons can be edu­ca­tio­nal, but in this field it is not op­ti­mal, he claims.

After his PhD, he is far from fi­nis­hed. His next pro­ject is al­re­ady in pro­gress. “I am now a post-doc in Sønder­borg.” After ha­ving worked on a pro­ject there du­ring his PhD, he knew some peop­le there. “It’s not the same pro­ject I worked on, but that hel­ped me. There was an offer for a re­al­ly nice re­se­arch pro­ject in Na­no­phy­sics.” For the next two years, he will be re­se­ar­ching the use of nano-trains to de­li­ver drugs to a spe­ci­fic tar­get in the human body. Ano­ther door that was – in some ways – ope­ned by Eras­mus.

© Fach­hoch­schu­le Kiel