(TCLS= Thursday Chemistry Lunch Seminar: 12.15-13 @ Tripletten
For ALL employees at the Chemistry Department!
Yesterday’s chemistry pot-luck Christmas party was great fun and a big success, clearly matching previous year’s events and even surpassing those in attendance! A clever and well-received novelty was to precede the party by an hour of sampling of seasonal products from ABC (the Alchemy/Academic Brewing Company) – thanks guys! 
Huge thanks are obviously due to Bengt Erik and his crew of organic synthetic chemists: Eirin, Frida, Louise, Beate, Nina, Markus, and Zeeshan. They made such a big effort to the benefit of all of us attending the party and, by facilitating a shared and joyous evening and thus adding to the working environment; to everybody at the department. The variety of tasty dishes was only met by the variety in challenges presented by Quizmaster Bjørn – the photo of the winning team was shot before the virtual nature of the prize was revealed.
Thanks to the enthusiasm and know-how of Monica, Karianne and Unni LB, the Department of Chemistry is now proudly launching our own instagram account. The purpose is to attain increased visibility to and interaction with prospective and present students, with glimpses from research and life as a student at our department. Please navigate your browser to https://www.instagram.com/kjemisk_uib/ and log-in, sign-up, follow or whatever you like. Please also supply Karianne with photos and comments to add to this stream, and cross-post and tag as you see fit.
Årets Nobelfest ble en stor suksess! Over 30 deltakere stilte for å få med seg det spennende foredraget om årets Nobelprisvinnere i kjemi som førsteamanuensis Yansong Zhao fra Høgskulen på Vestlandet holdt, samt for å ta del i den påfølgende festen med skalldyrsmiddag – eller chili sin carne for dem som ønsket et vegetariansk alternativ – og noe godt i glasset. Det ble god stemning med musikk og Nobelfestquiz etter middagen. Du er hjertelig velkommen til å bli med — om ett år! Fotograferende referent: Beate H.
A very sharp-looking Wietse Smit successfully defended his thesis Phosphine- and Indenylidene-Based Z-Selective Ruthenium Olefin Metathesis Catalysts and Catalyst Stability: Decomposition, Olefin Isomerization and Regeneration last Friday. Sincere and impressed gratulations!
Did you know that you can apply to receive 1 million NOK in funding from the Norwegian Research Council for your business idea? Are you a student approaching the end of your masters program, and have a business idea you would like to pursue? The application deadline for the StudENT-grant is February 12th, and mobilization has already started.
For more information, consult NRC, VIS or contact Innovation advisor at UiB, Susan Johnson.
Brannalarmen i dag var en øvelse – i regi av eiendomsavdelingen. Vi oppfordrer alle som evakueres til å trekke lengre unna utgangspartiene når vi evakuerer bygget.
The alarm today was a fire drill – initiated by Estate and Facilities Management Division. We kindly ask all employees and students to move further away from the doors (and building) when evacuated
When: 22. November, kl 19.00
Where: Realfagbygget, Tripletten (3069)
CC: 100 kr (members), 200 kr (non-members)
Sign up at: https://bit.ly/348Ya5n
You are most welcome!
Regarding the heralded Agilent 6500 UHPLC-ESI-QTOF hi-res LC/MS instrumentation, the good news is that most of the hardware has already reached the department and the installation will proceed during weeks 48-50.
Please note that the installation process demands that our existing lo- and hi-res MS instrumentation is taken out of production due to lack of nitrogen gas. The last day of any kind of MS acquisitions (low and high resolution) this year, will be Sunday November 24. If everything goes according to plan, both the new and old instrumentation will be online and running on a new N2-generator during the first week (low resolution, QqQ) and second week (high resolution, QqTOF and TOF) of January.
Last Friday, Malgorzata Anna Wisniewska-Dale successfully and confidently defended her thesis «Characterizing mass transport in hydrogels using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance» for the degree of ph.d. In this project, the freshly minted doctora has focused on structural aspects of hydrogels and how to characterize these experimentally, with potential applications to technologies for controlled release of pharmaceutical compounds.
I samarbeid med genforskere på New Zealand har Helge Berland, Monika Jordheim og Øyvind M. Andersen på Kjemisk instituttt ved UiB funnet en helt ny klasse av flavonoider. Dette er forbindelser som gir farge til bær og blomster og beskytter planter mot ulike former for stress. Så langt har forskere kartlagt rundt 9000 flavonoider fordelt på ti ulike klasser. Nå ser det ut til at det må føyes til en ellevte: auronidinene. De nye resultatene kan bety at utviklingshistorien for plantenes kjemiske forsvarssystemer må skrives om. Les om dette i populær versjon på uib.no eller i PNAS!
FARGESTOFF: Øyvind M. Andersen (t.v) og Helge Berland foran et tre i kirsebærslekten. Mens det er antocyaner som står bak de røde fargene i de fleste planter, var det trolig auronidiner som hadde denne funksjonen i de første landplantene for 450 millioner år siden. Foto: Jens Helleland Ådnanes, UiB.