AI Solving for Solvents Earns Laura König-Mattern 2nd Place at the German Thesis Award
 

• Prize: Dr. Laura König-Mattern received €10,000 from the Körber Foundation for her doctoral research, which introduced a computational method to produce chemicals from renewable biomass.
• Findings: Her work identified non-toxic solvents to extract precursors for green chemicals from wet microalgae—eliminating the need for drying; and also designed new solvents that extract lignin from wood at unprecedented efficiency.
• Future Directions Now at the Center for the Transformation of Chemistry (CTC), Laura is designing bio-based chemicals with tailor-made properties —advancing a circular, fossil-free chemical economy.

 

The Körber Foundation recognizes doctoral research with both scientific excellence and social relevance.
This year, Dr. Laura König-Mattern was awarded second place for her dissertation at Otto-von-Guericke University and the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems. She is now building on her findings at the Center for the Transformation of Chemistry (CTC) to accelerate the transition to sustainable chemistry.

“We can’t imagine a life without chemicals,” she says, “but we urgently need to rethink how we make them—moving away from fossil feedstocks and toward renewable resources.”

AI Match-Making: Pairing Solvents and Biomass for Green Chemicals

Biomass is an underused treasure trove of precursors for bio-based chemicals. Wood, straw, and microalgae all contain valuable proteins, fats, or carbohydrates that can serve as molecular building blocks. Laura studies solvents — liquids that selectively separate substances, much like hot water extracts flavor and color from coffee grounds while leaving the solids behind. Through a series of extraction steps, chemists isolate and separate these components—ready to be recombined into new chemicals and materials.

There’s no lack of potential solvents. “There are more candidates than stars in the Milky Way,” Laura says. But finding ones that are efficient, non-toxic, and sustainable is no easy feat. Testing them all in the lab would require enormous time and energy. So, Laura reframed the challenge as a mathematical optimization problem and developed computational tools to screen and design solvents, perfectly matching them with biorefinery processes.

“Conventional screening is like searching for a needle in a haystack. AI takes it a step further: it designs the perfect needle from scratch,” she explains.
“In simpler words, designing a solvent is like creating the perfect puzzle piece—it has to fit perfectly with the molecules you want and leave the wrong ones untouched”.

Finding the Perfect Solvent for Microalgae and Wood

The screening tool identified the perfect solvent match for microalgae residues from the food and pigment industries from a database of more than 8000 potential solvents. Conventional processes extract their valuable components only after energy-intensive drying. Laura discovered that a simple mix of water and a mild, eco-friendly alcohol (2-butanol), can separate proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and pigments directly from wet biomass—no drying required. This computational prediction was then confirmed in the lab.

But sometimes, not even algorithms can find the perfect match in an existing database. That was the case with wood waste—sawdust, bark, straw—Earth’s largest renewable carbon source. Extracting lignin, a versatile building block for chemical production, still relies on toxic solvents. Laura used her AI to design entirely new solvents tailored to maximize lignin solubility, simulating their performance in advance. When tested in the lab, the new solvents dissolved an unprecedented 60% of lignin—a major breakthrough in sustainable chemistry. Crucially, some of these solvents were even applicable in a biorefinery process that separates wood into its molecular building blocks - like lignin.

Why It Matters—and What’s Next at Center for the Transformation of Chemistry

Laura joined the Center for the Transformation of Chemistry (CTC) in early 2025 as a group leader, focusing on extending AI workflows to design bio-based chemicals with tailor-made properties. Her research helps reduce toxicity, energy use, and CO₂ emissions, and directly supports the CTC’s ambitious mission: building a circular economy by turning today’s waste biomass into tomorrow’s chemicals.