Kjemi-nytt — Kva skjer ved Kjemisk@UiB.no?

Bienvenue Douriya!

Douriya Khedaioui is a French student of Materials Science (4^th year) graduated from an Engineering School at Polytech Paris-UPMC in Paris. Ms. Khedaioui has chosen to do a 3-month internship in Professor Jensen’s group, on transition-metal catalyzed CO₂/epoxide copolymerization as part of the GreenCAT-project. Ms. Khedaioui has a strong background in organic and inorganic chemistry, polymers, and alloys, etc., and she is now eager to complement this with a focus on computational and theoretical chemistry. She is also enthusiastic about seeing more of the cultural and pretty Bergen!

Velkomen Frida!

Frida Johanne Lundevall vart nyleg tilsett som stipendiat i organisk syntese med Hans-René Bjørsvik som rettleiar. Ho skal arbeide med metodeutvikling og syntese av cytotoksiske sambindingar og positronemisjonstomografi (PET) ”tracers” med imidazol som utgangspunkt. Frida Johanne har teke heile utdanning si ved UiB og leverte masteroppgåva våren 2015. Masteroppgåva omhandla synteser av syklopropaner og vart gjort under rettleiing av Leiv Sydnes.

Velkomen til Elvira!

Elvira García de Jalón Viñegra ansettes som stipendiat i galenisk farmasi med arbeidssted ved Klinisk institutt 2 (MOFA) og Kjemisk institutt. Elvira skal jobbe med syntese og evaluering av peptider og biologiske biomarkører merket med fluoriserende prober for anvendelse innen molekylær avbildning av kreft. Elvira har bachelor grad i kjemi fra Universitetet i Barcelona og mastergrad i kjemi fra UiB i 2015. Veiledere under ph.d.-studiet er Emmet Mc Cormack (K2) og Bengt Erik Haug.

Pleased to welcome post doc Anamitra!

Dr. Anamitra Chatterjee is recently hired as a postdoctoral fellow for two years in Vidar’s group, on the so-called Idelab-project. This is an interdisciplinary project on the use of lipids from microalgae as feedstock for value-adding chemical processes and is funded by the Research Council of Norway. The chemical part of the project aims to develop new and improved organometallic catalysts for the transformation of lipid fatty acids to alpha olefins, focusing on reactions such as decarbonylative dehydration and catalysts based on late transition metals. Development of catalysts will be aided by computational predictions performed by PhD student Sondre (hired 2014).

Anamitra will be responsible for synthesis and testing of catalysts. He recently finished his PhD in catalysis from University of Basel, Switzerland (2011 – 2015) under supervision of Prof. Thomas Ward. The topic of his PhD thesis was «C-C bond-forming reactions using artificial metalloenzymes based on biotin-streptavidin technology». Anamitra is from West Bengal, India,  and earned his master degree in chemistry  in organic synthesis with Prof. Irishi Namboothiri at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India (2009 – 2011).

Welcome to Hajar!

Hajar Nsiri is a new PhD student in the Nanomodeling and theoretical chemistry group. The working title of her PhD project is «Transition-metal catalyzed CO2/epoxide copolymerization. Mechanistic insight and prediction from molecular-level calculations», supervised by Vidar (principal supervisor) and Erwan (co-supervisor). The PhD-project is part of the highly interdisciplinary project GreenCAT – «Design of Green Catalysts for the Conversion of Renewable Resources into Polymers», funded by the Research Council of Norway and with Erwan as the project manager. The goal is to develop transition metal catalysts for polymerization of CO2.

Hajar holds a master degree in organic synthesis and chemistry of bio-active molecules from the University Claude Bernard (Lyon, France). In her master project she worked on the relation between ligand structure/Activity/Polymer microstructure for the copolymerization of ethylene/butadiene by neodymocene complexes using quantum-chemical density functional theory (DFT) calculations.