I was truly delighted to welcome Prof. Bassam Dally at Simulation of Reactive Thermo-Fluid Systems (STFS), TU Darmstadt. We had inspiring discussions on renewable energy storage and the future of carbon-free energy carriers such as H₂, NH₃ and, in particular, metals. We reflected on how fundamental and applied research in engineering should be tightly interconnected.

Bassam has always been convinced that transferring research into application is a key mission of engineering – and our recent work on metals as energy carriers reminded me how essential this is (and how it continually triggers new fundamental research questions).

Looking back, I realised how long we have known each other: I first met Bassam as a PhD student at RWTH Aachen University, before 2000, when he was a visiting researcher from the University of Adelaide.

Fun fact: Bassam is an experimentalist, and the photo shows that good coffee brings experiments and simulations together perfectly.