“For outstanding achievements and leadership in the field of sustainable chemistry and catalysis research”, prof. Bert Weckhuysen (UU) is being honored the 2023 Chemistry Europe Award.

Chemistry Europe, an association of 16 chemical societies from 15 European countries publishing a family of high-quality scholarly journals and the magazine ChemistryViews, recognizes outstanding contributions to chemistry with its new Chemistry Europe Award. The award ceremony will be held in August, during the 49th IUPAC World Chemistry Congress (IUPAC|CHAINS2023) in The Hague, The Netherlands. Bert Weckhuysen will receive the award and give a lecture.

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In our latest MCEC Newsletter you can read about:

• Catalysis Connected 2022
• MCEC @ Weekend van de Wetenschap 2022
• Ferdy Coumans (TU/e) visits University of Hokkaido in Sapporo Japan
• Scientific Research Community: WOG – Catalysis for Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU)
• MCEC Publications

Important dates:

• Now – January 31 2023: Abstract submission EuropaCat
• Now – February 15 2023: Abstract submission IUPAC CHAINS
• March 6 – 8 2023: NCCC, The Netherlands’ Catalysis and Chemistry Conference

Get in touch with us on LinkedIn!

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In the second phase of MCEC, we have welcomed many new members. In this rubric we will introduce them to you. 

Yali Tang (TU/e)

… is assistant professor at the research group Power & Flow of Prof. Niels Deen in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at TU Eindhoven.

 

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The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has granted a Vici grant to Prof. Pieter Bruijninx of Utrecht University for his research project:

Circular-by-design: making chemical building blocks and materials more sustainably

Pieter Bruijnincx: We need to change the way we meet our society’s demands for carbon-containing materials. In this project, we put circularity central to molecular redesign of the chemicals and materials we daily use and develop new synthesis strategies to produce them more sustainably.

Many congratulations Pieter!

Modern society heavily relies on transportation. The internal combustion engines that power most vehicles emit gaseous pollutants that are harmful to human health and to the environment. Catalytic removal of toxic carbon monoxide (CO) from exhaust fumes is typically done with expensive noble metals as one of the key components of automotive catalytic convertors. For his PhD research, Valerii Muravev explored ways to improve the efficiency of costly catalysts by optimising the use of noble metals in convertors. Muravev recevied his PhD cum laude on November 26th 2021.

Read the article.

Have a look at the latest MCEC Publications (September – November 2021).

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The purpose of the MCEC Lecture Series is to show our PhD candidates what the possibilities are after completing their PhD.

Upcoming lectures:
– (tentative) January 2022 – Ivan Devic
– March 3 2022 – Evgeny Uslamin

MCEC Member David Fernandez Rivas has received the Stairway to Impact Award. The award is one of five prizes that the NWO domain Science (ENW) presents this week to scientists who are an inspiration in the area of societal impact, team science, excellent science, diversity and communication.

David is an adjunct professor in the Mesoscale Chemical Systems (MCS) department of the Science & Technology (ST) faculty at the University of Twente. He is mainly known for the development of an injection technique that reduces needle usage, by making the fluid itself the needle: it is ‘shot’ through the epidermis at high speed. Earlier this year, David also received the prestigious Prins Friso Ingenieursprijs Engineer of 2021, granted by the Royal Netherlands Society of Engineers for his work on bubbles for practical uses.

 

In light of recent events related to COVID-19, we would like to share news with you about the date of Catalysis Connected 2022. The current COVID-19 restrictions are subject to change in a number of countries in Western Europe. It is still uncertain how these developments will continue. To ensure a distinctive conference in terms of program , location and of course visitors, we have been working for a long time to attract a strong field of international speakers. However, with the event date in May, this proved to have some limitations. Very understandably, not every speaker will be in a position to pledge their participation to the conference. For us, this was of crucial importance to look out for a more suitable date.

We are all looking forward to having a great real-life edition of Catalysis Connected on 15-16 September 2022!

With this new date, we hope to put on an exciting conference, with great speakers, a stunning location and the opportunity to provide you, our guests, with the best scientific content you could wish for in two days.

Stay well and we look forward to share with you soon a glimpse of our new venue!

Team Catalysis Connected

Visit catalysisconnected.nl for more information.

This year, we were lucky the MCEC school was a live event again! Although the event was originally planned in Apeldoorn, last-minute changes caused a change in location, and we all enjoyed the nice countryside of Zwolle. 

During this week, we could enjoy very nice and diverse lectures related to chemical and physical science, statistics, machine learning and data visualization. In between there was enough time to catch up or learn to know the new members.

The PhD teaches PhD session illustrated nicely how we can relatively easily learn from each other, and it also revealed that together we have a high knowledge density in complex chemistry and physics.

Two social activities, a pubquiz and karaoke on Monday evening and sport event on Wednesday afternoon, were organized by the C-team and showed the competitive sides of each and every one. Concluding, this week showed that the MCEC community is diverse, inspiring and fun, which perfectly reflects how we visualize modern science.

Text: Jim de Ruiter (UU)
Photos: Anne-Eva Nieuwelink