YCN representative - Switzerland

Maria Stosz

YCN representative for the Swiss Ceramic Society

Empa – Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology

Maria.Stosz@empa.ch 

My name is Maria Stosz and I am a PhD student working in the research center in Switzerland (Empa – Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology). I consider myself a chemist/ceramist since I did my Bachelor's in Chemistry and my Master's degree in Materials Science with a focus on ceramic materials. During my Bachelor studies, I worked with organic and physical chemistry by synthesizing organic dies with a potential application in the photodynamic therapy of cancer. I have to admit that those fields will always have a special place in my heart. However, despite my passion for physical chemistry, especially photochemistry, I decided to move my scope of interest into ceramics, and I have never regretted this decision. After my Master's, I stayed in the field and now I fully dedicated myself to ceramics.

During my PhD, I am working on two major topics: joining and sintering of oxide ceramics. My first aim is to join ceramic components to each other by applying an additional interlayer and a thermal treatment, which I already started doing during my Master's Thesis. The addition of the sintering process into my research scope is aimed at having a better understanding of the sintering mechanisms and microstructure evolutions of materials during the different stages of processing. Besides, the final properties of sintered ceramics (with or without additives) have a direct influence on the following joining process. Moreover, during my research, I like to use less conventional approaches and try to think outside of the box, which means that I am highly interested in unconventional sintering methods.

I first heard about YCN in my laboratory. I immediately thought about how an impressive initiative it is. I had the pleasure of meeting first YCN representatives during Summer School about non-conventional sintering methods in Trento 2023 and then during the ECerS conference in Lyon 2023. I was truly amazed at the organization of YCN and with the great community created due to that. I am certain that I want to continue attending ECerS and YCN events in the future and I am proud to be a part of YCN during 2024-2025! Let's meet and talk about the greatest materials in the whole world – ceramics of course!

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