Dandan Chen, new doctor of the DiMoCat group

On 11th May 2021, Dandan Chen defended with success her PhD thesis entitled “Theoretical Study on the Aromaticity of Metallacycles and All-Metal Clusters in the Lowest Triplet State” supervised by Prof. Jun Zhu (Xiamen University) and Prof. Miquel Solà (UdG). She was awarded with the title of doctor for the University of Xiamen and the University of Girona. Congratulations, Dandan!

Dr. Chen had a predoctoral grant (State Scholarship Fund, No. 201906310040), awarded by the Chinese government, to carry out her PhD Thesis. She performed a research stay of about 1 year in the University of Girona during her PhD. She has published about twenty papers, including three J. Am. Chem. Soc., three Angew. Chem., two Chem. Commun. and one Acc. Chem. Res. We wish her good luck and great successes!!!

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PhD Thesis by Dr. Albert Artigas

On 31st January 2020, Dr. Albert Artigas defended his PhD Thesis entitled: “Cyclization reactions for the functionalization of fullerenes: Experimental and theoretical studies” supervised by Prof. Anna Roglans, Prof. Miquel Solà and Dr Agustí Lledó from the DiMoCat group at IQCC. The members of the evaluation committee were Prof. Roser Pleixats from UAB acting as a President, Prof. Thierry Achard from the Institut de Physique et Chimie des Matériaux de Strasbourg acting as a member, and Prof. Sílvia Osuna from the IQCC acting as a secretary.

Albert wrote a great Thesis and made a nice presentation! Congratulations, Albert!!!

Miquel Solà, honorary member of the Polish Chemical Society

On the opening ceremony of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Polish Chemical Society, organized on 2–6 September 2019, in Warsaw, the DiMoCat member Miquel Solà has been awarded the Honorary Member of the Polish Chemical Societyfor his outstanding scientific achievements and services for the Society“. The distinction has been delivered to Prof. Solà by Professor Izabela Nowak, president of the Polish Chemical Society and Professor Robert Nowakowski, the Chairman of the Organizing Committee.

Collaboration of Prof. Solà with Polish chemists started in 2003. Since then he has visited the labs of Prof. Krygowski, Prof. Cyranski and Dr. Zborowski (the latter one in the framework of the “Smoluchowski Seminar Guest Lecture Program” of the Jagiellonian University) and has been invited to three congresses organized by Polish chemists. On the other hand, ten Polish chemists (Dariusz Szczepanik, Halina Szatylowicz, Marcin Palusiak, Marcin Buchowiecki, Mirosław Jabonski, Krzysztof Zborowski, Antony Stasyuk, Olga Stasyuk, Paulina H. Marek and Kamila Pruszkowska) have visited the lab of Prof. Solà, most of them with a HPC-Europa fellowship. As a whole, Prof. Solà has published 23 articles with 21 different Polish co-authors. In particular, he has published 6 articles with T. Marek Krygowski, 6 with Marcin Palusiak, 8 with Antony Stasyuk, 5 with Halina Szatylowicz, and 4 with Dariusz Szczepanik. Among these articles, one can find 1 Angew. Chem., 2 Chem. Eur. J.,  3 J. Org. Chem., 3 Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 3 J. Phys. Chem. A, 1 J. Phys. Chem. C, and 1 J. Chem. Theory Comput.

The official document awarding the honorary distinction can be downloaded here: list prof. Sola PTChem 20.12.2018-1 RN

The first meeting of the Polish Chemical Society took place on 29th June 1919 (the society has celebrated this year its 100th anniversary). The honorary membership is given to those who particularly contributed to the development of Chemistry. Among the awardees we can cite names like Maria Skłodowska Curie (1924), Henri Le Chatelier (1924), Paul Sabatier (1924), Irwing Langmuir (1939), Ronald G. W. Norrish (1959), Edmund L. Hirst (1959), Ilya Prigogine (1970), Alan R. Katrinski (1986), Kyoichi Watanabe (1994),  Aleksander W. Zamojski (2000), Tadeusz M. Krygowski (2005), Helmut Schwarz (2015) or Hans-Ulrich Reissig (2017).

 

Two new fellowships to Alex Díaz and Cristina Castanyer, PhD researchers in training

This week we have known that Alex Díaz has got the prestigious FPU fellowship of the Spanish Ministerio de Educación and Cristina Castanyer has got the FPI fellowship that the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia awarded to the project CTQ2017-85341-P lead by Anna Pla and Miquel Solà. Alex Díaz is already a research in training supervised by Anna Pla and Anna Roglans and he is working on cyclization reactions catalized by Rh carbenes. Cristina Castanyer will start her PhD supervised by Anna Pla and Miquel Solà and she will work on [2+2+2] cycloadditions to fullerenes.

Congratulations to Àlex and Cristina!

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the DiMoCat research group – Excursion to Sant Miquel d’Hormoier

Officially, the DiMoCat was constituted on the 3rd of July 2009 with the resolution of the consolidated research groups 2009 of the Generalitat de Catalunya that gave us the number 2009 SGR 637.

To celebrate this event, on the 14th June of 2019, our group has visited Sant Miquel d’Hormoier, a small Romanic church built before 979 (first time its name is found in a document) located in the Ormoier valley close to the village of Oix in the region of La Garrotxa. We have left the cars in Oix and we have taken a regular dirt track, in a place of singular beauty. We have reached Sant Miquel d’Hormoier after walking 6,5 km. Finally, we have had lunch in Can Bundància, a restaurant in the road from Castellfollit de la Roca a Oix.