At the intersection of chemistry and physics

It took James Eills three attempts to find the right route. One morning, James Eills took his racing bike from his apartment in Cologne, dressed in full cycling gear, and set out to find the best route to Jülich. He knows it's 46 kilometres each way now, but first he had to find the most scenic route. Lovely views on both sides were one criterion, but above all, he wanted a route with few cars and hardly any intersections. "I ride my bike to work once a week," says James, who finally found the perfect door-to-door route on his fourth attempt. 'I can use the Landstraße!'

His passion for sports, especially triathlons, has accompanied the chemist throughout his travels. He has conducted research in Southampton, Berkeley, Mainz, Barcelona and Ulm, and is now based in Jülich — a lot of stops for the 32-year-old, who heads a working group on hyperpolarisation methods at Forschungszentrum Jülich. This year, James Eills will receive one of the most prestigious awards for young scientists: the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize from the German Research Foundation.

Hyperpolarisation allows us to see deeper into matter

James Eills is accustomed to explaining his field of expertise. In short, hyperpolarisation involves altering the magnetic resonance of molecules. Important imaging and analysis techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is widely used in medicine, are based on these magnetic properties. Hyperpolarisation is the key to answering many questions because nuclear magnetic measurement methods, such as MRI and NMR spectroscopy, can see much more accurately into matter. 'Thanks to hyperpolarisation, we can gain deeper insights into the structure of materials, the chemical composition of substance mixtures, and processes in the human body,' he says. There are three completely different areas of application for the high-tech method he is working on.

He prefers to use medicine as an example. In cancer patients, for instance, it has only been possible until now to determine the effectiveness of chemotherapy after a long delay — it takes time for the cancer cells to change in such a way that changes can be detected using MRI, for example. Hyperpolarisation can address this issue: if a patient is injected with a hyperpolarised substance such as pyruvic acid, it is absorbed by tumour cells and forms lactate. 'Thanks to hyperpolarisation, this process can be visualised using MRI,' says James Eills. 'If you see a lot of lactate on the images, you can conclude that there are tumour cells in the affected region.' Hyperpolarisation serves to visualise cells and reactions in the body that would otherwise remain undetected.

What fascinates James Eills is the process of hyperpolarization. Since the late 1950s, there have been repeated experiments in this field, but it is only in the last 20 years that the topic has really taken off – and Eills has been involved for the last ten years. He came across the questions that still fascinate him today early on, while working on his bachelor's thesis at the University of Southampton, not far from where he was born. “I went to my professor, Malcolm Levet. He's a great researcher in the field of physical chemistry, and I was interested in that field. So I asked him if he had a bachelor's project for me.” The professor thought for a moment, then took the knowledge-hungry student into his laboratory and gave him a brief overview of hyperpolarization. James Eills laughs today when he thinks back to that moment: “I understood almost nothing of what he told me.” Nevertheless, he agreed – or perhaps precisely because of that.

From Southampton to Berkeley to Jülich

At the time, it was still a field that did not arouse much interest among chemists. “For most chemists, everything to do with nuclear magnetic resonance is simply an analytical method. You send in a sample, it is examined, and you get the results back,” is how James Eills sums it up. But he quickly realized that there was much more to this method, that hyperpolarization could open up whole new levels of information, and he devoted himself entirely to this topic.

He planned his next career steps based on where he could delve deeper into the field. He completed his master's degree in Berkeley, then returned to Southampton for his doctoral thesis, moved to Mainz in 2018 to join the Helmholtz Institute there, signed on in Barcelona three years later, got involved in a medical start-up in Ulm that deals with hyperpolarization, and has now been at the Jülich Research Center since 2024.

Over the years, it has become clear that he chose the right topic: research is making tremendous progress and discovering new aspects, connections and techniques all the time. For instance, some methods only cause slight polarisation and are therefore less effective. Other methods require special chemicals. In addition, new techniques for polarising chemicals are emerging that were not possible in the past. At the same time, new fields of application are constantly emerging. James Eills and his team are at the heart of it all.

He is currently expanding his team in Jülich and improving his laboratory. Much of the hyperpolarisation equipment in his laboratory is homemade — he buys standard devices and assembles them exactly as required for his research. This tinkering and experimenting is all part of the job — “Sometimes it’s really fun,” he says, “but sometimes it’s also incredibly frustrating and takes an enormous amount of time.”

One of the advantages of triathlon for James Eills is that he comes up with new ideas while he's on the move. On his weekly road bike tour from Cologne to Jülich and back, for example. He has just started the season, and the Otto-Maigler-See lake in Cologne is just a few minutes' bike ride from his apartment – "the perfect place for swim training!"