We have the pleasure to have Anjali Jayachandran back in the team. Indeed Anjali was already part of the lab for a 6 months master training in 2018. Then she returned to India where she was involved in a non-profit organization. She is now among us for a short contract of laboratory technician. Welcome back to her !
Rémi Goerlich, who defended in the very end of September, finished his phD contract and after a small break, just left for a postdoctoral position in Israël. After spending close to 4 years in our lab and at IPCMS, as he started as a master 2 student, he will now work in the team of Yael Roichman in Tel Aviv University. We wish him all the best in his new life !
Rémi preraring (veggie) flammekueche (Photo Minghao Li)
We wish our friends, former students and collaborators all around the world a positive, healthy and happy new year !
Last Friday, we had our traditional end of the year group dinner, with former, actual and “about to leave” members of the lab. Indeed, it was also the occasion to say goodbye to Soh Kushida, who left one day later for Japan, where he will work at the Institute of Materials Science, Tsukuba University, but also to his fellow, Yoichi Sasaki, who will also leave us at the end of the month. On his side, Yoichi has been hired as assistant professor in the Kimizuka lab, at the Center for Molecular Systems in Kyushu University. Both Soh and Yoichi have been friendly colleagues who were involved in the social life of the team, thus contributing to his good atmosphere, and both worked on new and demanding research projects that recently bear fruits, no doubt that they will come back to finish some experiments !
Good luck to them !
On December 9, in 2002, ISIS building was inaugurated, in the presence of some officials and state representatives, but also through a beautiful scientific symposium including François Diederich, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes and Harmut Michel. We are thus celebrating its 20th birthday today. The official celebration will take place later on in early 2023, but in the meantime, happy birthday ISIS, with a special thought for his founder Jean-Marie Lehn.
Since one week, we have the pleasure to have a new postdoctoral researcher among us, Dr Sujith Meleppatt. Sujith comes from Kerala, at the very south of India, and did his master in chemistry in Calicut. Then he continued with a phD at IISER Thiruvananthapuram, studying the chirooptical properties of molecules and nanomaterials under the supervision of Pr Georges Thomas. Welcome to him !
Today, Bianca Patrahau, phD student in our group, is leading the Young Scientist Seminar of ISIS, at 9.30am, in the conference room, see flyer here below.
After the recent phD defenses, two more freshly graduated students left the lab for continuing their postdoctoral studies in the Netherlands :
– Jérôme Gautier was hired as postdoctoral researcher at AMOLF, Amsterdam, in the group of, Erik Garnett, Nanoscale Solar Cells
– Kripa Joseph, after a break in India, will start her postdoc in a few weeks in Eindhoven University of Technology, in Bert Meijer’ group.
Both of them spent more than 4 years among us, as they started as master students and were highly appreciated for their dedication in their research projects, but also for their human qualities. No doubt that they will succeed in their new positions and we wish them all the best !
Jérôme and Kripa after their phD defense (Photos Minghao Li)
After two years in the lab, our colleague Sudipta Saha left this week-end for a new postdoctoral position in the group of Pävi Törmä, in Aalto University, Finland. If he continues like this, next one will be on Svalbard islands… More seriously, Sudipta contributed efficiently to the projects he was involved in, in particular the tricky setup of a new Mueller experiment in the UV, and we will miss his competences, but also his constant good mood and his smile. Good luck to him !
Our most recent publication appeared one week ago, in the “ASAP” section of Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. In this work, we have developed a ROKE (resonant optical Kerr effect) spectroscopy setup to monitor the reorientational relaxation time of a solute molecule into a solvent, with a high accuracy and sensitivity. The key experimental factors were to tune the pump and the probe laser beams to the resonant wavelength of the solute, in order to amplify the signal, as well as the heterodyne detection, allowing to determine the relaxation time accurately. The accepted version can be downloaded from our publications page.
