Monica Keszler (FZJ)

Monica Keszler is a scientist at Forschungszentrum Jülich, where she works in the field of materials research. During her PhD at the Institute of Metal and Materials Physics (IMD-2), she worked on innovative recycling processes for complex industrial waste. Her work focused in particular on the direct recycling of steel grinding chips and hot-formed Nd-Fe-B magnets, which are considered particularly difficult to recycle due to ceramic impurities and sensitive microstructures.

In 2025, Monica Keszler was awarded the Helmholtz Doctoral Prize for her outstanding dissertation—an honor that is awarded annually to particularly original and excellent doctoral theses within the Helmholtz Association.

She now works as a research associate in the field of plasma physics at the Institute of Fusion Energy and Nuclear Waste Management (IFN-1) at Forschungszentrum Jülich. We spoke to Monica about her work and her motivation in an interview.

Interview:

What are you currently working on?

Monica Keszler: Currently, I have transitioned from my previous institute, IMD-2¹, to a new institute, IFN-1² as a post-doctoral researcher. While I’m still in the very early stages of my post-doc, ultimately I’m hoping to contribute to oxidation-resistant alloy research for solar capture and/or nuclear fusion reactor walls. I will be using the sintering technology I used in my PhD research, field assisted sintering technology/spark plasma sintering (FAST/SPS), so I look forward to being able to apply my previously gained knowledge to a new project. FAST/SPS is special in that it can consolidate mixed metals and ceramics, fine-tune material microstructure, and heat up very quickly for fast processing times. For these reasons, it has been an attractive candidate for both material recycling and material synthesis.

What is your personal motivation?

Monica Keszler: I want to look optimistically forward to a future with abundant alternative energy sources and a more circular economy. I want to contribute to the research that allows future generations to thrive on this earth. There are many challenges on this path, but I still believe it is worth pursuing.

What kind of challenges are you facing in the near future?

Monica Keszler: A large part of this work is attempting to scale our processes up beyond laboratory scale to something more industrially applicable. Even if something works on the small-scale, machine limitations can often prevent us from pushing parameters on a larger scale. Expensive equipment gets broken when we’re working with materials or techniques we’ve never attempted before, and this can cause quite a few setbacks. We can prepare ourselves as much as we can, but often we just have to take the plunge and see what happens. If we succeed, even more questions follow. “Is this process attractive to industry? Can we optimize it even more?” Then, if we make changes to the material composition or powder type, the process starts all over again. But at least we have the knowledge from our previous attempts to make the next attempted scale-up smoother.

If you could make a wish for something for your research, what would you wish for?

Monica Keszler: I would love to see the beginnings of serious “closed-loop” material production in my lifetime. A huge setback for recycling specifically is the cost factor – in most cases, it is cheaper to mine ore or refine petroleum to make things like metals and plastics than it is to recycle. It would give me a lot of hope to see the policy and infrastructure develop to make large-scale material recycling feasible and effective. I also hope to see the first functioning nuclear fusion reactors and further developments in solar capture. There are so many possibilities to transition to alternative energy, but the resources for infrastructure, research for scale-up, and the policy for implementation all need to be honed in.

Where do you see your discipline in 5-10 years?

Monica Keszler: If we are fortunate, materials synthesized from FAST/SPS could be lining the first operating nuclear fusion reactor walls. We could also be using FAST/SPS to eliminate entire waste streams that are currently being landfilled, instead transitioning these streams directly into new, usable tools. In the case of recycling, a lot of work is required up-stream to make these sorts of dreams into reality. A huge factor is material separation. Even if FAST/SPS works well as an upcycling method, the performance of the final product relies heavily on what ingredients are going in. Direct recycling will always have some elements of imperfection and variability; whether or not we can deal with them will determine if the technology will succeed.

ORCID: 0009-0002-9743-4632