CiTOS member Sébastien Renson‘s received the Solvay prize for this Master thesis! The prize rewards the four best master dissertations in the country and was officially granted during the SRC 2023 Scientific Day. On this day, Sébastien delivered an oral presentation on his award-winning work, which was done in collaboration with his mentors Yuesu Chen, Claire Muzyka, and Jean-Christophe Monbaliu.

Part of his work has already been published and is available online from Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Read it here.

A huge congratulations to Sébastien and to the lab on producing such fine work in flow chemistry!

The Aloïse Benoît Coomans Foundation from ULiège’spatrimony rewards significant advances in the field of Organic Chemistry. This year, the prize goes to CiTOS member Pauline Bianchi.

Pauline’s work proposes an original approach to develop new synthetic pathways, based on the use of continuous flow coupled with predictive numerical simulation methods. This is a prize awards around EUR 10,000 for the pursuit of her research career. Congrats on this new achievement!

Last September 21 was a huge day for CiTOS! We took this day to celebrate 10 years since the lab first opened with a full day of activities. The morning started at Maredsous Abbey, where we had a tour of the cheese and beer factory, and a magnificent lunch, followed by a guided tour of the abbey. The lunch break was also the moment to present Jean-Christophe with the many gifts that all lab members had planned to celebrate the occasion.

After many laughs and many beers at Maredsous, we headed out to Dinant, where the whole group took part of a laser game. Each person was equipped with a laser gun and divided into two groups, and out we went into fields and mud.

It was a very memorable day for all of us here at CiTOS, celebrating all the achievements of these past 10 years and excited for the years to come!

Yuesu is granted a 3-year FNRS Research Fellowship(Chargé de Recherches) starting from 1^st October 2023 under the supervision of JC for his proposal aiming at the preparation of dinitrogen trioxide (N₂O₃) and its application in organic synthesis. With the protocol for the generation of concentrated N₂O₃ solution established by Yuesu in his first postdoctoral stay in CiTOS, we are looking forward to seeing more exciting nitrosation chemistry of this nicely blue-colored compound.

Check out the newsletter from MolSys, ULiège for more:

https://www.molsys.uliege.be/cms/c_11612554/en/congratulations-to-dr-yuesu-chen-for-his-fnfn-grant

The first transdisciplinary Scientific Advisory Board was held on September 7, 2023 in Liestal, Switzerland. Stimulating debates on future technology developments and strategic directions involved a team of 8 academic profiles, top management, platforms directors, and researchers from CordenPharma.

We’re proud to have JC selected as part of  the Scientific Advisory Board. He will take part as an expert in Flow Chemistry and Organic Synthesis.

JC attended the 6th EuChemS Conference on Green and Sustainable Chemistry in scenic Salerno, Italy (September 3-6, 2023). He presented a medley of recent research programs at CiTOS, with the emphasis on the synergy between computational chemistry and flow technology. After a dense scientific program, it was also a unique cultural opportunity before jumping in the next plane to Switzerland.

August was also the occasion for third yearChemistry bachelor student Soulaimane to join the lab for his first research experience. Soulaimane assisted CiTOS postdoc Anita in developing our projects involving acylnitroso chemistry. He contributed extensively throughout the month and got a first glance at life in a research lab.

We wish him good luck in the upcoming semester and hope to have him back in the lab soon for further collaboration!

Last Friday, the CiTOS members welcomed back Elyse and Sébastien who came back to the lab after their research experiences abroad, the completion of their masters studies, and some well deserved holidays.

Sébastien will be preparing his FRIA interview to start a PhD related to the study of chiral alpha-chloronitroso species while Elyse will work under the umbrella of the newly founded Flow4All industrial platform.

It’s great to have them back in the team!

Thanks to the WelT grant we recently obtained, we are now looking for three new members for our team here at CiTOS! Two PhD student and one Postdoc position are currently open.

The goal of this project is to decrease the reliance on trial-and-error approaches to chemistry by using quantum mechanics computations to obtain a priori knowledge of a chemical reaction. This project brings together computational modeling to generate initial data, and machine learning to home in on an effective prediction model for reactivity. This model will be used to predict optimal reaction conditions, which will then be tested using a microfluidic flow reactor. Experiments will be conducted on an in-house automated platform equipped with inline monitoring. This approach will be applied to novel synthetic routes, for which there is no existing data, to showcase how novel, more efficient synthetic routes can be developed with a minimal number of experiments through the combination of these disciplines.

More details on the candidature can be found at:

• PhD: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/130142
• Postdoc: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/130175 

We’re happy to have Nicole Torres, from the University of Puerto Rico, here at CiTOS.
Nicole is part of an FDA-funded collaboration that bring together the University of Liege (CiTOS), the University of Puerto Rico, MIT and Northeastern University.

On the side of CiTOS, Loïc and Hubert are in charge of advancing this project. And this month, we’ve had the opportunity to have Nicole here familiarizing herself with the synthesis component of the project. Later on, Nicole will be in charge of the implementation of process analytical technology and chemometrics.

We’re happy for this short stay, and look forward to having Nicole back here in 2024.