Have you ever visited an online poster session before? Today is your chance, when this year’s Nano100 students present their posters. The exhibition is open already, but the poster session with the presentees available to explain and elaborate starts at 1130 (waiting room opens at 1120). Welcome to all, and congrats to this year’s Nano100 students!
Today, the Kavli prizes for 2020 was awarded. Chair of the award committee for nano science, our colleague at the Physics department, professor Bodil Holst, had the honour of announcing the four winners.
This years winners receive the award because of their work to develop very accurate and aberration-corrected lenses for focusing electrons, thereby developing transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning TEM to sub-ångström resolution.
Gruppe B
Study programs in the Norwegian university sector are usually funded by the government, with the full cost covered by base funding (60%) and result funding (study points achieved plus graduates; 40%). This model applies for instance to the pharmacy programs at UiO and UiT. The pharmacy program at the University of Bergen differs in this respect, in that only the result component (40%) of the funding is provided from Oslo. The lion’s share of the cost is thus covered by UiB central. It has been, and still is, difficult to accept such a large difference in how the pharmacy programs in Norway are funded.
Today, the government announced how 4000 new study places will be distributed over institutions of higher education in Norway. 251 of the 4000 places are allocated to UiB as follows: 62 (health), 35 (teacher’s ed), 72 (MNT), 80 (economy, law) and 2 (new areas). And here comes the main point: 5 out of the 62 health slots will be fully financed pharmacy students! This calls for a celebration or what!
Last Wednesday, Markus Dörner was the first PhD candidate at our department to defend his PhD thesis at the comfort of his own home. The zoom-based event largely preserved the formal and timeless atmosphere of the physical dissertation ceremony and was a nice experience for active participants as well as spectators. The title of the thesis is «Investigation of the molecular and isotopic response to deposition, thermal maturity, hydrocarbon generation, and expulsion: A multidisciplinary approach based on the Cenozoic sequences on Svalbard.» Dr Dörner gave a very convincing performance in terms of presenting and defending his work. Congratulations!
The Norwegian government has allocated money to selected projects for upgrading physical infrastructure for eduction. In the words of the minister for research and higher education, Henrik Asheim, «studentene ønsker også mer undervisning der de deltar aktivt. Det krever at vi har auditorier, laboratorier, verksteder og andre undervisnings-lokaler som gir bedre mulighet for deltakelse.» UiB receives 25 MNOK for upgrading chemistry laboratories in the Science building, under the explicit condition that UiB allocates matching funds or more, to the same purpose.
Sunil Kumar Pandey has recently joined the Department of Chemistry as a researcher in organic synthesis and medicinal chemistry under Bengt Erik Haug group. His research area is innovation within the drug discovery project which is financed by BIOTEK2021-programme. Sunil has PhD degree from National Chemical Laboratories (Pune University) Maharastra, India. For details can visit his profil.
Sondre H. Hopen Eliasson has (re)joined the Department of Chemistry, now as a researcher. After finishing his master’s degree in nanoscience at the physics department he wrote his doctoral thesis on the subject of Mechanistic studies of organometallic catalysts for fatty acid conversion, under the tutelage of Professor Vidar R. Jensen. Their collaboration will now continue with Sondre refocusing on computational studies of homogeneous electrocatalysts for reduction of CO2 as a part of the Nordic Consortium for CO2 Conversion (NCCO2) project.
I started the bachelor program in nanotechnology fall of 2014, and advanced to the master program in nanoscience under supervision of Vidar Jensen, spring of 2018. During my masters, I worked on the development of E-selective Ru catalysts for olefin metathesis, and my master thesis was titled: Computational Studies and Design ofStereoselective Ruthenium-Based Catalysts for Olefin Metathesis. As a PhD-student, I will continue to work on olefin metathesis, where I will research catalyst stability. With the results from this study, I will try to predict new, more stable catalysts, both for selective and non-selective olefin metathesis.
Professor Nathalie Reuter, CBU and Dept. Chemistry, has been elected member of the PRACE Scientific Steering Committee! PRACE, short for Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, is an organization set to enable high-impact scientific discovery and engineering research and development, by offering world class computing and data management resources and services through a peer review process.
Quoting a recent Sigma2 newsletter: The Scientific Steering Committee is composed of European leading researchers that are responsible for advice and guidance on all matters of a scientific and technical nature, which may influence the scientific work carried out by the use of the PRACE supercomputers. Nathalie Reuter (..) will through the Scientific Steering Committee advise PRACE on how best to exploit the PRACE facilities to maximize the benefits to European Science.
We congratulate Nathalie and PRACE!