Breaking bonds: Tugce Beyazay wins Düsseldorf Science Slam

Max Planck researcher uses a “Bachelorette” dating show to explain how hydrogen could help recover valuable metals from industrial waste

At a glance

• Award: Science Slam winner at the Düsseldorf Night of Science 2026
• Winner: Dr Tugce Beyazay, project group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials
• Research question: Can hydrogen be used to recover valuable metals from industrial waste?
• Potential impact: Less waste, better recovery of valuable resources and more sustainable metal production

Three scientists competed at the Science Slam during the Düsseldorf Night of Science on 11 September.  Dr Tugce Beyazay, project group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials, won the competition with her entertaining talk “Breaking bonds – the chemistry of hydrogen reduction”. She turned her scientific topic into a dating show inspired by TV-show The Bachelorette and explained how hydrogen could be used to extract metal from industrial waste.

From industrial waste to valuable resources

Many metals in industrial waste are bound to oxygen in metal oxides. But not all of these bonds are equally strong. Different metal oxides have different thermodynamic stabilities, meaning that some are easier to reduce and recover as metals than others. This raises an important challenge: Can hydrogen selectively recover valuable metals even when different metals bond with different strengths with oxygen?

The question is highly relevant for a circular economy. Industrial waste streams, such as spent catalysts, contain valuable metals. Globally, around 200,000 tonnes of spent catalysts are generated each year, making efficient recovery methods increasingly important.

Düsseldorf Night of Science

The Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials participated at this year’s Night of Science with the science slam by Beyazay, and with a talk about using AI for analysing baby cries and bird songs, given by Dr Navyanth Kusampudi, postdoctoral researcher at the institute. The main attraction was a science booth where the Max Planck team showed their latest research about green hydrogen production, energy storage in batteries and atomic scale characterization of energy materials. The next Night of Science in Düsseldorf is planned for autumn 2028.