A lot has happened in the lab over the past months, so here is a short summary of our autumn.
Oktoberfest
On September 29, the group made the obligatory trip to Oktoberfest. We were lucky with the weather and enjoyed a sunny afternoon together.
New faces in the lab
It is long overdue to mention, but several people have joined our lab. In August, Santiago Barreiro-Medina from the Complex Systems Chemistry graduate school at the University of Strasbourg started his M2 internship with us and will stay until the end of the year. In September, David González Martínez, a PhD student in the Andrés de la Escosura group in Madrid, joined us for a three-month exchange to learn how high-throughput kinetics and mechanistic experiments can be used in systems chemistry. And in October, William Lander from the University of Edinburgh started his master’s thesis in our group; he will be with us until the middle of next year. Welcome, Santiago, David, and William!
From left to right: David, Santiago, and Will.
A second lab in the CRC
Since November, we have a second lab in the Catalysis Research Center. This is super exciting: our current lab was already overcrowded, and the additional space finally allows us to expand.
Waits to be filled: our new synthesis lab in the Catalysis Research Center
ANR–DFG grant with David Leboeuf
Together with the group of David Leboeuf in Strasbourg, we have been awarded joint ANR–DFG funding to investigate the role of HFIP in acid-catalyzed reactions. HFIP often dramatically accelerates such reactions, but which acid works best in it is still found largely by trial and error. Starting in January 2027, in this joint project, our team will lead the physical-organic and high-throughput studies to provide the underlying physical insights, while the team in Strasbourg will lead the synthetic efforts. It is particularly nice that the project goes back to an informal discussion between David and Robert when Robert was still a postdoc in Strasbourg.
Teaching
In October, the teaching season started again. Robert is teaching the physical-organic chemistry class, which is aimed at master’s students and part of the organic chemistry elective module at TUM, every Monday from 13:15 to 14:45, followed by the exercise from 15:00 to 15:45. Hard to believe that this is already the third iteration of the class!
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