On January 23, 2026, BIG-NSE alumna Dr. Nastaran Ranjbar Sahraie (in the picture middle) visited Berlin. At that time she was exploring new career opportunities in Germany, and she used the trip to catch up with her former program. Over lunch, she met the BIG-NSE office and fellow alumna Dr. Kuheli Dutta (on the picture right), who is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Peter Strasser at TU Berlin, where Nastaran wrote her own PhD.
Nastaran belongs to the WS09 BIG-NSE batch and completed her doctorate in March 2014, supervised by Prof. Peter Strasser and Prof. Arne Thomas (both TU Berlin). Her thesis focused on the synthesis and characterization of non-noble metal catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction.
After her PhD, Nastaran worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institut Charles Gerhardt (AIME-ICGM) in Montpellier, France, from 2015 to 2018. She then moved into scientific publishing, joining the Springer Nature Group in 2018 as an editor in applied sciences and later becoming Senior Managing Editor. Since June 2026, she has been working as Production Manager at Amazon in Munich.
Kuheli, a member of the WS19 batch, completed her PhD in March 2024 on the mechanisms of transition-metal-mediated dioxygen bond formation and cleavage. From July 2024, she has then been working in the Strasser group on oxygen evolution catalysts for seawater electrolysis and was thus happy to share information with Nastaran.
It was a pleasure to see both alumnae again and to exchange news. Dear Nastaran, we are delighted that your search has led to a new position in Munich, and we wish you every success in your new role. Dear Kuheli, we wish you all the best for your research. We look forward to seeing you both again soon!