Reactions – Mark Muldoon

Posted on 30 Sep 2011 by Anne Pichon

Mark Muldoon is in the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, and his research is focused on transition metal catalysis and developing sustainable catalytic processes.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

According to my parents, from a young age I was always pestering them with questions about how things worked or why something was a certain colour etc. So perhaps unsurprisingly I always found science subjects the most interesting at school. Although I liked all of the sciences I preferred chemistry because it tries to understand things at a molecular level. I also liked the fact that it was practical subject that had real world applications and was central to pretty much everything that we have come to rely on in the developed world.

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

Outside of science subjects at school I also liked art, so perhaps I could try and be an architect or an artist (undoubtedly a struggling one as I wasn’t talented enough). I guess I enjoy attempting to be creative and I think from that point of view there is a lot of similarity between art and chemistry. Or if we are going for a fantasy alternative universe I would like to play basketball in the NBA or be a Scottish international footballer (although the latter would most likely mean a life of great disappointment!).

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

We are working on a few different projects, but the major theme within the group is selective oxidation catalysis. Oxidation reactions are a significant challenge in many different areas of chemistry; for example even a simple transformation such as alcohol oxidation is avoided by the pharmaceutical industry when it comes to carrying out the reactions on scale. This is because methods that are commonly used on a small lab scale are not acceptable when scaled up, often because they have toxic reagents or by-products. At the moment we are trying to develop catalysts for a number of different oxidation reactions. The aim is to develop catalysts which use oxygen as the terminal oxidant and that have the qualities needed for industrial applications (e.g. catalysts which can deliver high turnover numbers and can be easily separated from the products). We hope that this will lead to such catalysts being employed on a larger scale (which would be no small feat!). In the longer term we aim to tackle even more difficult problems, for example selective C-H bond activation and energy related challenges.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

I think Richard Feynman would be an excellent choice; great conversation and who knows how and where the night would end!

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

Last week I ran a few experiments actually. During term time it is difficult to find time to run any experiments myself, but in the summer I can usually carry out the odd experiment. So recently I have been carrying out some preliminary experiments on some new copper catalysed dehydrogenation reactions.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one music album would you take with you?

This is a tricky one. In terms of books: Well I think a desert island could get pretty boring, so maybe some very difficult book which would keep me busy/puzzled for years, like Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”. On the other hand “100 Tasty Coconut Recipes” might be better. Again it is very hard to pick just one album to be “stuck with”, but for such a scenario perhaps “Echoes – The Best of Pink Floyd” would be a good choice as it would ensure that I am completely chilled out on this island.

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

Daniel Nocera at MIT. He is working in arguably one of the most important areas (solar splitting of water) and he delivers inspirational talks on his research and the challenges that we face regarding sustainable energy.

From crazy chemists to engaged learners through education

Posted on 28 Sep 2011 by Stuart Cantrill

Editor’s note: We published a series of ‘beyond the bench’ Commentary articles in our September 2011 issue to celebrate the International Year of Chemistry. These are free just for the rest of September, so get them while you can! We recently received some correspondence from John Spevacek on the chemistry education article written by David Smith from York – and so we are publishing it here, with a reply from Smith. We encourage you to add your own thoughts in the comments section here on the blog.

To the Editors:

Professor Smith argues in his September commentary (“From Crazy Chemist to Engaged Learners through Education”, Nature Chem. 3, 681–684, (2011)) that the retention of facts as a core part of chemical education needs to be questioned since so much information is readily available via electronic means.

I would emphatically argue against this on three points.

First, while an ever increasing amount information is available on the internet, access to much of that information, particularly chemical information, is difficult to access as it is behind pay-per-view or subscription firewalls. I have found that this issue is poorly appreciated by those in academia who have good access to the literature via their institutions. Chemists working in industrial settings, and particularly those employed at medium or small-sized companies do not have such broad access. Scanning the abstract of an article of interest more often than not does not provide appropriate assurance that paying $35 for access to the article will actually provide the needed information. The risk to potentially access the information is often not taken since this game may need to be played multiple times, and so the facts are not found. More free access and lower access costs are certainly foreseeable in the future, but free access to all information is not.

Second, information needs context, a point that ironically was argued by Prof. Smith himself. However, the context I speak of is based on knowledge of the fundamentals, not the social situation in which a concept can be used (such as in the examples of curries provided by the author). Without that knowledge, all inputs must be considered as truthful and consistent with existing knowledge and no judgment can be made regarding the validity of any new inputs. Contrast this with someone who has retained a base foundation of facts. Such a person, in reading an article on Wikipedia or a research article claiming the development of a new breakthrough, is capable of judgments as to whether or not the claims are true and consistent with other findings, and is further capable of generating additional ideas to further test the claims.

Third, knowledge of information is needed to be conversant in chemistry, whether one is in a classroom, meeting with their superiors or outside clients. To be able to say “I can look that up” is to state “I am no better than anyone else”. As an extreme example, I could state that I am fluent in reading Swahili because I can look every word up in an English-Swahili dictionary. (I feel free to make that claim as Professor Smith does nothing to delineate how many fewer facts we should impose on students, only that it should be less.)

In all seriousness, I realize that the scale of “what to look up” versus “what to know” is a slippery slope even today (just poll your colleagues as to how much of the periodic table they have memorized), and that every older generation is appalled by the lack of (basic!) facts taught to the newer generation, but this has occurred in the past as a result of the ever expanding base of knowledge, not because of technological improvements in the access to information. To argue that technology should be used to accelerate that trend clearly takes us into new territory that has not be explored before. While the idea of trying the experiment is worthwhile in principle, keep in mind that we have only one chance to educate students – if the experiment fails, we cannot go back to correct the error.

In summary, the ability to quickly obtain chemical information will increase in the future, but a solid base of facts needs to be known by the individuals accessing it in order to be able to be comfortable with it, to make proper use of the data and to be conversant with it, and if we error, it should be on the side of requiring students to learn too many facts, not too few.

John Spevacek, Ph. D.

Aspen Research Corporation

https://www.rheothing.com/

David Smith replies:

I thank John Spevacek for his comments on my article – only by robustly debating the merits of different approaches can we reinviogorate the way our students are taught. I would, however, like to point out that although my article argues for a change of emphasis in chemical education, it certainly does not, as John suggests, propose the complete removal of facts from the curriculum. Indeed, I would like to quote just one of my key sentences for clarity: ‘Of course a foundation of sound knowledge is crucial, but the bigger challenges facing the modern chemist are to appreciate the true value of the available information, develop the skils to interpret it sensibly and the capabaility to make creative connections…’ [emphasis added].

Students certainly do, as stated above, require a sound foundation of knowledge in order to progress. My article really challenges whether students really need to memorise/know the same amount of detail that they once did. For example, is it necessary for undergraduates to commit to memory each and every variant of a carbonyl condensation reaction, along with the name of its discoverer, as I once did – or is it more important that they have an understanding of the general mechanism of this class of reaction, the capacity to work out the details from its fundamental first principles, and an ability to recognise this type of reaction and its significance, when shown it in a new real-world context? I would still argue that we are wasting our students’ cognitive capacity if we make them memorise too much, and that combining core knowledge with contextual problem solving skills is the only way for them to develop the ability to interpret the vast range of chemistry with which they can be faced.

The point about the accessibility of information is certainly well made. I would hold that for many school and many undergraduate classes, the information available online is rich and diverse in nature, and much of it is high quality. However, certainly at research level, much information is protected by publishers and inaccessible to non-subscribers. Of course this is an issue, not only in an industrial setting, but in the developing world and educational settings outside universities. This is a problem which many initiatives in open access publishing hope to address. In an ideal world, there would be equality of access to all information – there is no doubt that this would facilitate education, and the ability of all to gain access to the cutting-edge of scientific progress.

Finally, in order to emphasise the importance of learning in context – I would like to take John’s example of learning Swahili. It would be possible to learn all the grammar, all the vocabulary, and have a full understanding of the rules of the language, all on paper. However, the best way to learn a language is to pick up some basics (not try to learn the whole language) and then immerse yourself in the country – go out there, make mistakes, and learn from them. Only by living in a country do you become a true expert – you need to hear the language spoken in context, read it from a real newspaper, have a slang conversation with a local friend, or see how the language connects with the local food, culture and history. Chemical knowledge is just like learning a language – only by using your fundamental knowledge to solve problems in a relevant context, immersing yourself in the chemistry of the real world, can you truly learn the skills required to become an ‘expert’. In my opinion, it is these subject-specific skills in applying knowledge which are the most valuable aspects of a modern education and will create the next generation of chemical experts.

Prof. David Smith

The University of York

https://www.york.ac.uk/chemistry/staff/academic/o-s/dsmith/

Reactions – David Lemal

Posted on 23 Sep 2011 by Anne Pichon

David Lemal is at the Department of Chemistry at Dartmouth College and works on the synthesis and chemistry of unusual organic species – both stable and short-lived – and in the mechanism of organic reactions.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

Chemicals and their transformations first intrigued me at a young age in the form of a ChemCraft chemistry set with its colorful array of exotic solids and liquids. I graduated to a basement lab stocked with chemicals that I bought at Eimer & Amend in New York City, and a friend of the family bestowed upon me a bottle containing several pounds of potassium chlorate. Thus, with some sulfur and charcoal I was able to make as much of my own variation on gunpowder as needed.

When I reached high school, however, sports and girls eclipsed chemistry in my pantheon of interests, and taking the lone chemistry course hardly changed that. Students never got to touch a chemical, nor did the teacher, with two exceptions — he used the carbon dioxide fire extinguisher to blast students who talked in class, or doused them with ammonium hydroxide. He never gave a chemical answer to a student query. “It’s just because the good Lord made it that way” or “You’ll get it when you go to college” sufficed to handle any question.

As a premed in college, I found myself taking comparative anatomy and organic chemistry simultaneously. I didn’t enjoy cutting up animals, but I had a great time in the “orgo” lab. These experiences set me on the path to becoming a chemistry professor. As those were the days of DuPont’s “Better things for better living through chemistry,” there was added inspiration for my career choice.

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

Science and technology have always interested me more than any other vistas on the intellectual landscape. I would be happy as a biologist, but nowadays that would mean doing chemistry, so I must make another choice. Engineering appeals to me, especially the biomedical variety with its notable successes and bright prospects for the future.

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

The focus of my research is fluorocarbon chemistry, a branch of organic chemistry in which fluorine substitutes for the hydrogens that form the “skin” of most organic molecules. Fluorocarbons differ dramatically in properties and chemical behavior from their hydrocarbon counterparts, with the result that they have found many applications in our culture for which they are uniquely well suited. The overarching goal of my work is to contribute to our understanding of the effects of fluorine substitution on organic molecules. My coworkers and I typically choose molecules that we expect to display properties and chemistry that are unusual even for fluorocarbons; e.g., highly strained, energy-rich, very reactive molecules. We then try to synthesize them in order to explore their nature and behavior.

At present, I am trying to synthesize highly fluorinated bicyclo[1.1.0]butanes. My quantum mechanical calculations predict quite remarkable reactivity for these compounds as a consequence of both the severe strain in their bonds and the character of their fluorine substituents. I look forward to testing these predictions.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

Marie Curie would be my choice. Garnering Nobel Prizes in both chemistry and physics is a phenomenal feat for anyone. What an accomplishment for a woman at the beginning of the 20th century! When I was very young, seeing a movie about her discovery of radium was a source of inspiration for me to pursue chemistry.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab?

This morning. A key reaction on the path to a target molecule had gone awry, yielding an unexpected product. Today’s experiment – isolating and purifying that product – was necessary for determining its structure. With that in hand, I hope to understand the errant chemistry.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one music album would you take with you?

It would depend on whether I was marooned on, or luxuriating on that island. If the former, I would take along a copy of Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, a wonderful story about survival under unbelievably difficult conditions. If luxuriating, I might opt instead for Kumar’s Quantum, a fascinating history of 20th century physics focusing on the decades-long dispute between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr over the nature of reality. As for a music album, I would choose a selection of top hits from the great broadway musicals.

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

Albert Eschenmoser. Deserving of a Nobel Prize for his highly creative work on the synthesis of Vitamin B12, not to mention his many other impressive contributions to synthetic and mechanistic organic chemistry, Professor Eschenmoser is also a gracious, generous, unassuming man with a fine sense of humor. There is no one in our profession that I admire more.

OR – Edward C. Taylor. Now the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at Princeton University, Ted has capped a highly productive and distinguished career with the discovery, in conjunction with Eli Lilly, of Alimta, a blockbuster anticancer drug. Exuberant and vigorous at age 88, he could pass for 60. It is really hard not to envy this guy!

Speaking Frankly: Changing childbirth policies

Posted on 16 Sep 2011 by Stuart Cantrill

Frank Leibfarth is a graduate student trying to make his way through the academic maze. Find him contributing to the Sceptical Chymist or continue the conversation on Twitter @Frank_Leibfarth.

Today’s post enables me to expand upon a recent letter I co-authored (sub req’d) in Science entitled ‘Hope for graduate school childbirth policies.’ We are incredibly grateful for the journal’s support in highlighting this important topic. Below you can find some of my uncensored and expanded opinions on the subject. I would encourage those from other places in the world to comment on this issue. What are the policies like in Europe? In Asia? Are they better or worse?

We, as chemists, strive to recruit the best and brightest students to our discipline. Half of those students are women (or more, since more women than men earn bachelors degrees [pdf] in chemistry), yet the number of women who reach the upper echelon of chemical science is widely disproportionate. Articles about the subject usually cite the standard reasons: women are discriminated against in hiring (sub req’d), grant funding, and publishing [pdf]. These somewhat qualitative explanations, however, do not tell the whole story. Professor Carol Robinson gives a first-hand account of the cultural barriers in her recent article (sub req’d), but there remain concrete, institutional boundaries for women to thrive in science that are routinely ignored. Following the lead of Professor Richard Zare, myself and a group of graduate students set out to change our university’s childbirth policy and eliminate at least one of the institutional barriers toward gaining a fair representation of women in chemistry.

Graduate students in the U.S. who have or desire a child must not only combat the pervading perception that one cannot be both a mother and an academic, but must also navigate university childbirth policy that is often discouraging and/or nonexistent. Even if faculty and administration are supportive of graduate students who want to have children, this support is often unstated, incoherent across disciplines, or informal in nature. Traditionally, the policy for pregnancy in graduate school is to take a formal leave of absence (LOA), which amounts to withdrawing from graduate school for up to four months. Tangibly, a LOA means that, in a vulnerable time, a woman must give up her university health insurance (or pay for it herself) and her teaching assistant income or graduate stipend. Almost worse than these tangible effects is the fact that the students are stigmatized; they are seen as ‘walking away‘ from their responsibilities rather than exercising their minimum rights as an expecting mother.

Graduate students who had children often found they had to make up the rules as they went; they faced insecurities regarding their academic standing in addition to anxieties about their relationship and obligations to their advisor. Consequently, we sought a change in policy not only to give students guaranteed health insurance, housing, and some paid leave, but also to begin to change the institutional culture regarding having a child during graduate school. As mentioned in our letter to Science, the key barrier was establishing a university recognized committee to give our effort a voice within the bureaucracy. After accomplishing this through our Graduate Student Association, providing quantitative evidence about the need for change, soliciting letters from students and faculty, putting together a formal proposal was simple. Furthermore, our collaboration with the Graduate Dean was invaluable in our efforts, as she was able to advocate on our behalf on committees in which we had no voice. This point highlights another surprising finding, almost everyone at the university was supportive of our proposal; policy change is many times a problem of initiative.

We hope that our experience can serve as a blueprint for other graduate students, faculty, and administrators looking to overcome the perceived conflict between family and graduate studies [pdf]. Our policy, which provides an extension of academic requirements without taking a leave of absence and up to six weeks paid leave, endows students with a sense of support and an institutional recognition that they are valuable resources who deserve to be treated as such. Additionally, as evidenced by faculty surveyed, there are uncertainties that face faculty members in these situations that could be removed with clear university-wide policy.

The idea that women should be (effectively) forced to wait until obtaining a Ph.D. to have a child is disgraceful. If we want to see more women in science in the future, we need to rid our universities of institutional sexism. In addressing the need for a formal and coherent childbirth accommodation policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, we found that tangible policy changes and the accompanying permeative process catalyzed institutional discussions regarding the value of diversity in the academic pipeline. Our experience illustrated the shared goals of faculty, students, and administrators in recruiting, retaining, and supporting the best and brightest graduate students.

Reactions – Marina Kuimova

Posted on 15 Sep 2011 by Anne Pichon

Marina Kuimova is in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London, and works on photophysics, spectroscopy and fluorescence imaging of dyes in live biological cells.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I was always keen on science at school, but chemistry was not a favourite for a long time, I much preferred physics and maths. I guess in the first instance my interest in chemistry was stimulated when I turned up at a chemistry afterschool class and realised I can not solve even the easiest of extracurricular problems. In the end, I have my hurt pride on that occasion, as well as the excellent and inspirational teacher of that class, to thank for my deciding to study chemistry at the Moscow State University. However I also kept my interest in physics and maths alive as I became a physical chemist!

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

I think I am quite good at persuading people, so perhaps I could make a decent lawyer. Either that or a saleswoman!!

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

We are trying to develop and characterise the series of small fluorescent molecules called ‘molecular rotors’. These molecular rotors show a marked change in fluorescence (spectra, lifetimes) depending on the viscosity of their environment. The hope is that once incubated within live cells, the fluorescence detected from ‘molecular rotors’ will help us understand more about the properties of the intracellular environment and the role of viscosity in important biological processes.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

I have to say Richard Feynman. He is such a charismatic figure in science and a great populariser of Physics, so much so that his explanations make even the most complicated phenomena interesting and related to life. I’d like to know how he managed to do it. My parents have The Feynman Lectures on Physics standing next to Shakespeare, so I can not guarantee my Dad wasn’t reading it to me instead of nursery rhymes or Grimm’s fairy tales when I was little.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

A couple of weeks ago – me and my student tried to measure the singlet oxygen quantum yield of a new fluorescent dye, which appears to kill cells. Since we have detected none, we now need to look for another reactive species responsible for this dye’s toxicity!

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one music album would you take with you?

The difficulty is to choose just one. If it is really just one book I’d go for ‘Master and Margarita’ by Mikhail Bulgakov. I read this book so many times I am pretty sure I can read it many more. This will be closely followed by Catch 22 and Catcher in the Rye.

I really love classical music, but prefer to listen to it live, so the CD will have to be The Doors or Don McLean (American Pie).

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

Peter Ogilby from Aarhus University is someone I know will give excellent and original answers to these questions.

Element of the month: All about arsenic

Posted on 13 Sep 2011 by Anne Pichon

The first thing most people think of when they hear ‘arsenic’ is ‘poison’. In fact, it has played such a crucial part in many a high-profile murder throughout history that it used to be called ‘poudre de succession’ in French (inheritance powder) — mostly by women, according to the French Wikipédia page (!)

This month (subscription required), Katherine Haxton from Keele University — who also blogs at Endless Possibilities and can be found on Twitter @kjhaxton — explains why arsenic is a particularly suitable element to illustrate the notion that chemicals might be good or bad depending on their use. And so, as arsenic was inheritance powder for the French, Victorians across the Channel in Britain used it for more entertaining purposes — such as self-medication, for example to improve breathing and stamina, to freshen the skin, as an aphrodisiac, and perhaps even an anti-eczema cream by Charles Darwin.

Although organoarsenic coumpounds were prepared as early as the 1750s, their structures remained elusive until the mid-nineteenth century when Bunsen, with some help from Berzelius, identified tetra-methyl-di-arsane — a “fuming liquid with a strong garlic odour” (maybe this is why it remained elusive for so long!).

Although this sounds surprising arsenic has been used in medicine throughout history. Cyclic compounds with As–As bonds for example went on to become relatively efficient drugs against syphilis, especially after a bit of optimization to reduce some side effects and improve handling procedures (air sensitive compounds weren’t the easiest to administer). But despite medical uses, arsenic — fairly abundant in nature, and present in living systems — can readily make its way into ground water and poison large populations. Yet it seems that in 19^th century Austria, people could have consumed about 300 mg of arsenic (more than 4-times the fatal dose) without dropping dead. Could organisms get used to arsenic? Kids, don’t try this at home.

This is a topic that has been thoroughly discussed in light of a recent Science paper describing a bacterium that can supposedly grow by using arsenic instead of phosphorus. Since its publication, it has been widely — and passionately — debated in many venues, including press conferences, magazines, the Internet and as follow-up Technical Comments in Science, and was even mentioned on Nature Chemistry’s very own Blogroll.

Saviour or killer? Check out the article for other anecdotes about arsenic’s ambivalence!

Anne

Anne Pichon (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Keeping up with the journals

Posted on 12 Sep 2011 by Gavin Armstrong

[This post is an abridged version of the editorial in the September 2011 issue — the full text can be accessed here, available for free to all registered users. We welcome feedback on our editorials in the comments section below.]

With more and more scientific articles and journals being published, how can you effectively keep abreast of new research relevant to your own projects?

The ever-increasing number of chemistry-related journals and articles has been discussed and debated for years. Usually the focus falls on three issues: the increase in the overall number of articles, the increase in the number of (usually more specialized) journals, and the fragmentation of results by researchers to maximize their number of publications. The first issue is easy to explain: there are simply more scientists now and they all depend critically upon the publication of their work. Few scientists would argue against more science and this issue seems here to stay.

The increase in the number of specialized journals is a more contentious matter. In 1973, a group of eleven concerned chemists lamented the “recent proliferation of journals”. They argued that “the literature should be so constructed as to deter trends towards overspecialization, and should foster communication among chemists working in different areas”.

The sentiment about improving interdisciplinary communication is admirable, but the general growth in the number of publications makes it unrealistic to expect researchers to keep up with current studies by reading only a few select journals. Compartmentalization was an inevitability that has some sound logic behind it — researchers can read specialist journals knowing that they will find papers of interest and can publish in them assured that their peers will be more likely to see their work.

With the literature now so vast, keeping abreast of what is going on in a given scientific field has become a real challenge, but remains an important aspect of practising cutting-edge science. Not knowing about a published paper relevant to your research can have detrimental consequences when trying to get published or funded.

To keep track of the literature, the Nature Chemistry editors all use RSS feeds with a feed reader that allows papers to be shared among the team. You subscribe to the feeds of journals and when they publish an article the feed is updated. This might sound just like an e-mail alert or like browsing the journal website, but RSS feeds are far more straightforward to organize, track and search.

There are other online tools that can be used in a similar way. Twitter, as a rapid online information exchange, is a great way of keeping up to date with news of more general scientific interest, but unless your research community is actively using it to swap interesting papers, it is much less useful for keeping track of more specialized areas. Online reference-management programmes such as Connotea and Mendeley also have the facility to share articles. The website ‘Faculty of 1000’ provides the biomedical community with a place to find papers that other researchers find interesting and an equivalent in the chemistry community would be most useful. It relies on academics identifying and evaluating articles from the literature and can, quite quickly, give an idea of which papers are piquing the interest of their peers.

With a little organization and some useful online tools, the apparently daunting task of keeping up to date can be achieved: like eating an elephant, it has to be done one bite at a time.

You can read full the editorial here (registration is free).

Gavin

Gavin Armstrong (Senior Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Winter School anyone?

Posted on 12 Sep 2011 by Stuart Cantrill

The European Winter School on Physical Organic Chemistry will take place in Bressanone early next year, straddling the end of January and the beginning of February. Why am I telling you this? Well, although the main focus of the winter school is going to be catalysis, the organizers have kindly invited me to give a talk about scientific publishing.

There are 14 speakers in total, so in addition to yours truly, there will be lectures from: Martin Albrecht (UCD), Isabel Arends (TUDelft), Matthias Beller (LIKAT), Carsten Bolm (Aachen), Olga Bortolini (Ferrara), Miquel Costas Salgueiro (Girona), Livius Cotarca (Zach), Fahmi Himo (Stockholm), Alceo Macchioni (UNIPG), Feliu Maseras (ICIQ), Per-Ola Norrby (Göteborg), Sason Shaik (HUJI), and Dieter Vogt (TUE).

The school is aimed primarily at PhD students, postdocs and junior researchers in academia and industry, but established researchers can apply to go as well. There are some fellowships available to cover the cost of registration and so if you are interested, you should contact the organizers – see the website for more details. The deadline for applications is November 1st, so get in there quick.

You may notice that the winter-school website has a bit of a skiing theme – so if you like skiing (like my colleague Neil), perhaps there is some extra incentive to apply. I’m about as indifferent to skiing as one can get (I imagine), so Neil is somewhat miffed that I’ve managed to get an invite to a conference in a ski resort in January. I’ve been told to make it clear that if you know of any chemistry conferences next year where skiing is a possibility, you should let Neil know forthwith – perhaps in the comments below!

Hope to see you in Bressanone in Jan/Feb next year!

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Chief Editor, Nature Chemistry)

The Sceptical Chymist

a blog from Nature Chemistry

Monthly Archives: September 2011

Reactions – Mark Muldoon

From crazy chemists to engaged learners through education

Blogroll: Angry chemists

Reactions – David Lemal

Speaking Frankly: Changing childbirth policies

Reactions – Marina Kuimova

Element of the month: All about arsenic

Keeping up with the journals

Winter School anyone?

Blogroll: ChemBark, PI