ChemCafé

Tuesday’s plenary session involved Bert Meijer (from Eindhoven University of Technology) speaking about self-organizing polymers into complex assemblies. Very interesting stuff, and I spent part of the day in the session of supramolecular chemistry, attending a lecture by Eric Anslyn on one of my favourite topics (arrays of differential sensors), and some time in [...]

Last week we enjoyed in Lausanne the long expected visit and talk by Prof. Makoto Fujita, from the University of Tokyo. Since my undergrad supramolecular chemistry courses I had been fascinated and intrigued by the macrocycles and cages that regularly popped up from the Fujita lab, so the idea of watching him giving a talk [...]

Some time ago came to Lausanne Prof. Lanny S. Liebeskind from Emory University in Atlanta, co-inventor of the Liebeskind-Srogl coupling. This coupling allows the formation of a new C-C bond starting from a thioester and a boronic acid. The reaction usually requires catalytical palladium as well as a copper-based co-catalyst, but a variation using only [...]