Farewell to Marie Curie postdoc Abhijit Sau, who leaves us for a tenure track position at IICT Hyderabad. Abhijit will work at home for a couple of months to write grants and finish papers before launching his new lab. Congratulations and good luck!
Group News
Farewell to the MSc Students
2020 has been a challenging year for young researchers, but our MSc students have made the most of it. Unable to work in the lab, Valentyn Pozhydaiev (M1 EUR) and Martin Power (M2 EUR) both finished top of their class for their internships and co-authored a feature article that is now under review. Daria Brykczyńska (M1, Poznań University, Poland), Eugénie (M1 CB), Louis-Albin Gravillier (M2 CB) and Joris Zimmermann (M2 CB) completed their internships despite their lab time being cut very short. Luckily, Elodie Didier (M1, University of Geneva, Switzerland) was able to reschedule her internship over the summer so that she could do some lab work. We will miss them all but look forward to their bright future!
Martin will join Prof. Dave Leigh’s lab in Manchester as a Marie Curie PhD student. Joris won an MRT fellowship to do a PhD in our lab. Congrats and good luck!
Dr. Elodie Chevallot-Beroux
Congrats to Elodie Chevallot-Beroux on successfully defending her thesis! She is the sixth PhD student to graduate from the group. Special thanks to jury members Prof. Peter Strazewski, Dr. Robert Pascal and Prof. Petra Hellwig for being part of the jury. A memorable pot de thèse followed featuring an unimaginable number of gifts! Elodie will start her new position as Research Scientist at Innovame in Marlenheim, France.
Dr. Lucas Lethuillier
Congrats to Lucas Lethuillier on successfully defending his thesis! He is the fifth PhD student to graduate from the group. Special thanks to jury members Prof. Albrecht Berkessel, Prof. Jay Siegel, Dr. Sami Lahkdar, Prof. Nicolas Javahiraly, and our close collaborator Prof. Thomas Ebbesen for being part of the jury. A memorable pot de thèse followed featuring both of his grandmothers! Lucas has accepted a lucrative industrial postdoctoral contract to apply the findings of his thesis to problems of interest to a major chemical company.
Dr. Robin Isnard joins the group
A warm welcome to new postdoctoral fellow Robin Isnard, an analytical chemist who comes to us from the group of Prof. Hervé Cottin at the University of Paris-Est Créteil, where he worked on the analysis of organic matter in comets. Welcome, Robin!
Sophia and Harpreet join the group
The sixth incoming class of PhD students joins the group. Sophia Rauscher, funded by the ProtoMet ITN, and Harpreet Kaur will both work on proto-metabolism. A warm welcome to both!
Jan leaves for BASF
Congratulations and farewell to group member Dr. Jan Gorges, who accepts a research position at BASF in Ludwigshafen. Jan was a postdoc in the group for only 10 months, but managed to submit his first publication before leaving ahead of schedule for a sweet industrial position. He is the third lab member to obtain a permanent position at BASF. For a farewell, Jan prepared homemade kebabs for a group dinner. Best of luck in the new career and come visit often!
Funding from Volkswagen Foundation
Joseph has received funding from the Volkswagen Foundation for a project called “Forming catalysts: A basic principle of deep chemistry, life chemistry and life”, which will be carried out in collaboration with Prof. William F. Martin (Düsseldorf) and Dr. Harun Tüysüz (MPI Mülheim/Ruhr). Each lab will roughly equally share the 1.5 M€ in funding. See the press release in English here and in German here. We are looking forward to officially getting the project started!
Sreejith wins the FRC Thesis Prize
Congratulations to Dr. Sreejith Varma, who won the FRC Thesis Prize for his PhD thesis on the chemical origins of metabolic pathways. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Charité Hospital in Berlin. Below, Sreejith and Vuk pose with their proud mothers after the graduation ceremony.
Dr. Ankita Malik joins the group
A warm welcome to new postdoctoral fellow Ankita Malik, who comes to us from the group of Daniel Varón Silva and Peter Seeberger at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, where she worked on complex polysaccharide synthesis. Welcome, Ankita!
