Archives
2024
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In January 2024, the new SCS Division of Materials Chemistry (MatChem) was formed by amalgamating the former SCS division for Polymers, Colloids, and Interfaces with the Materials Sciences. This issue of CHIMIA provides an overview of some of the research activities that are being carried out by the research community, from soft materials to materials discovery to energy-storing materials to nanostructures.
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Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the European Research Council (ERC) are two of the main funding sources for the academic chemical sciences in Switzerland. Their support over the years at different levels of academic life has helped develop and strengthen academic research in Switzerland and beyond. Here we highlight just a fraction of the research that is taking place under the ERC & SNSF-ERC funding from 2019-2023.
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This issue of CHIMIA is devoted to scientific integrity, with a particular emphasis on chemistry. Recent incidences of high-profile figures contesting scientific findings in order to boost their own agenda in areas such as human health; worldwide pandemics; climate change and the impact of artificial intelligence on society highlight how “Fake News” is given credibility boosted by examples of scientific misconduct that open the door to questions about the integrity of scientists and their research. Research integrity is an issue for all scientists who should embrace the promotion of best practices in their own disciplines.
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Each year the Swiss Chemical Society awards prizes to excellent chemical scientists active in the Swiss chemical community. The prize winners are invited to write an article for CHIMIA describing their award-winning work. Dr. Eric Eichhorn and Dr. Fridtjof Schroeder et. al. received the Sandmeyer Award 2023 for their work on sustainable (-)-Ambrox production. The Distinguished Senior Industrial Science Award 2023 was given to Alain De Mesmaeker who summarises, in his article, some of the aspects of his research over the years. Dr. Robin A. Fairhurst received the Senior Industrial Science Award 2023 for his work on the β2-adrenoceptor receptor. The Industrial Science Awards 2023 were awarded to Dr. Uwe Grether and his team for their work on the endocannabinoid system and to Dr. Tomas Smejkal and his team for their work on Ir-catalysed C-H borylation. The Grammaticakis-Neumann Prize 2023 was awarded to Dr. Lea Nienhaus for her work on exploring sensitized photon upconversion. Dr. Michael A. Stravs was awarded the METAS Award 2023 for his work on computational mass spectrometry from references spectra to deep learning.
This issue also contains the program and information about the Swiss Chemical Society Fall Meeting, September 5th, 2024.
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This issue of CHIMIA focuses on Sustainable Development Goals in Chemistry In Switzerland. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals as defined by the United Nations provide a framework to address some of the most pressing global challenges, from rising inequalities to economic growth and environmental impact. A range of approaches that are being taken throughout Switzerland in chemistry-related fields and organisations are described with the aim of fulfilling the commitments of the 2023 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
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This issue of CHIMIA highlights some of the research currently being undertaken at various facilities across Switzerland that utilises operando spectroscopy for the identification of active structures within solid catalysts. This allows the correlation of the active structure with the kinetic parameters of the reactions which can aid in the design of more efficient catalysts.
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In this Junior Laureates Issue of CHIMIA, fourteen recipients of the best oral and the best poster presentation awards at the Fall Meeting 2023 of the Swiss Chemical Society have taken the opportunity to present their award winning research. For more than a decade, Metrohm (oral communications) and dsm-firmenich (posters) have been sponsoring this unique award program.
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Close relationships and collaborations between industry and academia is vital to drive the sustainable growth of the Swiss chemical industry. The Division of Industrial and Applied Chemistry (DIAC) encourages these collaborations which are beneficial to both industry and academy, as well as to society as a whole.
2023
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Technology development and deployment to afford a more sustainable and circular chemical industry is required urgently. This special issue is dedicated to Green and Sustainable Chemistry, with a specific focus on Waste Valorization. The aim of this issue is to highlight how technology-driven companies, mostly originating from academic institutions, can aid in the transition from a linear to a more circular economy. This issue brings together players from academia, industry, and start-up organizations to build a balanced and informative issue addressing the various angles of plastic Waste Valorization.
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This special issue is dedicated to ‘Chemistry & Soil’. It underlines the importance of chemistry when investigating the many aspects relating to Soil Science. We hope that the excellent contributions included in this issue can promote many fruitful discussions within our scientific community, with a special emphasis on sustainability and soil remediation. Furthermore, we hope that this issue can stimulate the younger readers to look at chemistry from the less common soil perspective and inspire them in their future scientific and professional endeavors.
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This issue follows on from a symposium organised by the Division of Chemical Education of the Swiss Chemical Society entitled 'Challenges in Teaching Chemistry'. The challenges start in high school where teachers face the difficult task of iconnecting the macroscopic level represented by the properties of substances or materials with the microscopic level related to interactions between atoms, molecules, or ions. Simultaneously, pupils learn the language of chemistry, which might prove at least as challenging as acquiring any other language at this age (if not even more so). The contributors to this issue include high-school teachers and university lecturers and professors from Switzerland and abroad who present a variety of reports dealing with experiences acquired in classrooms and lecture halls. It is interesting to see that some of the problems encountered at high schools are also (sometimes even strongly) present at the universities.
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The year 2023 marks the 80th anniversary of the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH). Associated with the University of Basel, Swiss TPH combines research, education and services, working across a value chain from innovation and validation to application to improve people’s health and well-being.
In this special issue of CHIMIA, we highlight 30 years of research and development (R&D) at Swiss TPH, deeply grounded in partnership, towards new drugs for tropical diseases.
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Each year the Swiss Chemical Society awards prizes to excellent chemical scientists active in the Swiss chemical community. The prizewinners are invited to write an article for CHIMIA describing their awardwinning work. Recipient of the Werner Prize 2023, Prof. Victor Mougel took inspiration from enzymes to design electrocatalysts. Dr. Teodoro Laino and his team received the Sandmeyer Prize 2022 for outstanding work in industrial or applied chemistry. They considered chemical reactions in terms of language elements, a model particularly adapted for machine learning. The Senior Industrial Science Award 2022 was awarded to Dr. Bernd Kuhn, who details in his article how important it is to consider all protein–ligand interactions to accurately predict reactive conformations and biological activity. The challenges in the development of anion-exchange membranes, essential components of efficient fuel cells, are described by Prof. Xile Hu, who received the Green & Sustainable Chemistry Award 2022. Recipients of the Balmer Prize 2022, Dr. Paolo Lubini and Michele D’Anna pioneered a new approach of teaching chemistry, using chemical potential and entropy very early on. And last but by no means least, the Paracelsus Prize 2022, the most prestigious award of the SCS, was awarded to Prof. Antonio Togni, who expresses in his article his philosophy of research, showing the sometimes subtle intertwining of “urgent science” vs “luxury science”.
This issue also contains the program and information about the Swiss Chemical Society Fall Meeting, August 24-25, 2022, and all the abstracts of the oral and poster contributions.
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This special issue is dedicated to the interdisciplinary field of biocatalysis, which harnesses the power of enzymes to drive a green and sustainable approach to chemical synthesis. Biocatalysis has gained significant traction in both industrial and academic settings within Switzerland in recent years, thanks to our accelerating ability to tailor desired enzymatic properties. Authors from academia and industry showcase a range of applications in the vibrant field of biocatalysis highlighting the great potential of this vital research sector.
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Flow chemistry has seen a significant uptake over the past 20 years and this has led to an increased use across various industries and academic groups. Flow chemistry has the potential to change the way industrial processes are tackled and also speed up discovery and academic research with benefits to global sociey. This issue presents examples from an international authorship to provide a glimpse of how the technology is used, integrated with other tools and to drive innovation.
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In this Junior Laureates Issue of CHIMIA, thirteen recipients of the best oral and the best poster presentation awards at the Fall Meeting 2022 of the Swiss Chemical Society have taken the opportunity to present their awardwinning research. For more than a decade, Metrohm (oral communications) and DSM Nutrition (posters) have been sponsoring this unique award program.
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This issue introduces the National Center of Competence in Research, NCCR Catalysis (nccr-catalysis.ch). Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), ETH Zurich and EPFL, and other contributions, the goal of the NCCR Catalysis is to identify and develop sustainable routes for manufacturing chemicals from renewable platforms across the value chain. The project brings together top scientists with diverse expertise combining advanced approaches in chemistry with modern tools like digitalization to accelerate the discovery, understanding, and implementation of novel catalysts and processes. Since its launch in August 2020, the consortium has grown to 47 Principal Investigators across 13 institutions, with over 200 members. Selected projects are presented in this issue to illustrate the diverse research areas.
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the ability of machines to respond in seemingly intelligent ways, producing outputs in response to new inputs without being expressly programmed to do so. Unlike traditional computer programs, which generate outputs based on explicit sets of instructions, AI systems are designed to make predictions based on data-driven models. As a result, the use of models and data constitutes essential components of this strategy. For this issue of CHIMIA, the guest editors have selected a collection of Swiss research chemists’ contributions and perspectives on AI method development and implementation, ranging from the use of AI/ML for: chemical reaction optimization using a wide range of approaches, chemical reaction prediction, improving water quality, enabling autonomous laboratories, to treasuring the lesson learned from AI/ML in computer science when contextualized with its development in chemistry.
2022
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The National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) TransCure, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the University of Bern, was active from 2010 to 2022. It provided a unique research and educational framework in the membrane transporter and ion channel field. Thanks to an interdisciplinary approach comprising physiology, structural biology, and chemistry, in parallel to a rich offering in complementary areas such as education and technology transfer, the network achieved outstanding scientific results and contributed to the education of young scientists. This issue presents the main features and milestones of the NCCR TransCure.
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Chemical ecology aims to understand the impact of natural chemicals on ecological processes. By combining natural products chemistry and ecology, often in creative and surprising ways, chemical ecologists unravel the mechanisms that govern interactions between different organisms. From pheromones to plant toxins, ecological interactions are governed by the exchange of small molecular weight organic compounds. Identifying such molecules along with their biological and ecological effects has proven to be a powerful approach to understand the world around us, to find new ways towards sustainable agriculture and develop new approaches to manage environmental and human health. Over the last decades, Switzerland has become a stronghold of world class research in chemical ecology. The Swiss chemical ecology community is rapidly growing and gaining momentum. We hope that you will enjoy reading about some of its exploits in this special issue of CHIMIA!
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This special issue is devoted to polymers, colloids and interfaces. The rapidly increasing need for sustainable, high-performance materials and devices requires interdisciplinary research that is at the interface between chemistry, physics, biology, material science and engineering. Polymers, colloids and interfaces are located at exactly this interface. Early- to mid-career scientists responded to the invitation to write comprehensive perspectives on their vision on the fabrication of functional materials using polymers, colloids, and interfaces. This issue includes visions on the use of functionalized polymers as photoswitches to design the next-generation of smart, photo-responsive polymers, the use of block-copolymers and colloids to introduce colors to materials or to render them antimicrobial. It features the interdisciplinarity and breadth of this field and should stimulate thoughts on how to advance it to make a true contribution to the introduction of more sustainable materials, devices, and processes.
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The recruitment of young talent to Swiss University Departments of Chemistry is crucial to maintaining the excellence of chemical research undertaken in Switzerland. This issue presents articles from young professors and Ambizione fellows covering a wide range of topics reflecting the diversity of research interests.
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The SCS supports a very active award program and in the past year a wide range of outstanding scientists at all career levels were honored. This issue presents contributions from these scientists: Prof. Fabian von Rohr, University of Geneva, was awarded the Werner Prize 2022, the Sandmeyer Award 2021 went to teams from Casale and Clariant, Dr. Andrew Edmunds, Syngenta, received the Senior Industrial Science Award 2021 and the Industrial Science Award went to Dr. Cornelia Zumbrunn, Idorsia. Dr. Kristýna Kantnerová, currently at the University of Colorado Boulder, was honoured with the METAS Award 2021, while Prof. Andrew deMello, ETH Zurich, received the Simon-Widmer Award 2021. Last but certainly not least, Prof. Francesca Paradisi, University of Bern, was honored with the Green & Sustainable Chemistry Award 2021.
This issue also contains the program and information about the Swiss Chemical Society Fall Meeting, September 8, 2022, and all the abstracts of the oral and poster contributions.
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This exciting issue showcases the award-winning research of sixteen promising young scientists, recipients of a best poster or oral presentation prize at the 2021 Fall Meeting of the Swiss Chemical Society.
The cover image was provided by Lukas Heuberger, University of Basel, and depicts a micrograph of fluorescently labeled giant unilamellar vesicles (GUV) made from diblock copolymers. The insert shows a schematic representation of the working principle of GUV production using double emulsion microfluidics. -
In 2020, Empa, the ETH Domain’s interdisciplinary research institute for materials science and technology, celebrated its 140th anniversary. According to its vision – Materials and technology for a sustainable future – the institute fulfills a bridging role between fundamental research and practical applications. By connecting partners from industry and research, Empa scientists play a key role in the innovation process in Switzerland. This is the basis of Empa’s leading position in applied research and technology transfer. Empa thus makes a significant contribution to further strengthening the innovative power and attractiveness of the Swiss economy in an increasingly competitive global environment. In this sense, this issue focuses on new applied materials and systems and related analytical research for structural understanding highlighting Empa’s strengths in this domain, from the atomic scale to the macro-world, bridging fundamental research and real-world applications.
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Mass spectrometry is a important method in many fields of academic research, including chemistry, biology, cosmochemistry, pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences, earth and environmental sciences, materials science and technology development, forensics and art restoration. Mass spectrometry is equally widespread in industrial research and development as well as quality control, in particular in companies that are active in diagnosis, in the pharmaceutical sector, the biomedical area, and in flavors & fragrances. This compilation of contributions from specialists in many of these fields shows how the breadth of applications as well as the analytical and instrumental toolbox are constantly and rapidly developing.
2021
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In this issue we will see novel tools to measure membrane properties (Flipper probes), manipulate membranes (photoswitchable lipids) and analyse membrane lipid homeostasis with increase spatial and temporal resolution. Molecular Dynamics Simulation image of a membrane was provided by Stefano Vanni. Other images were taken from articles in this issue contributed by Stefan Matile, Dirk Trauner, Howard Riezman.
The Editorial Board of CHIMIA warmly thanks Professor Howard Riezman for organising this issue on ‘Chemical Biology of Membranes and Signaling’ to highlight some of the impressive results achieved in the National Centre for Competence in Research (NCCR) in Chemical Biology, directly and with collaborators.
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This special issue representatively highlights outstanding scientific partnerships between industrial and academic groups, with the aim to sustain the awareness “of what others are doing, applaud their efforts, acknowledge their successes, and encourage them in their pursuits.” – Jim Stovall.
It is with great pleasure that the Editorial Board of CHIMIA thanks the guest editor Prof. Christof Sparr for the successful realisation of this special issue on Industrial-Academic Partnerships demonstrating the synergy and potential that can arise from combining the best of Industry and Academia.
The image on the front cover is by Jaan Künnap, entitled ‘Climbers ascending at Ullu-Tau Range in Caucasus Mountains, Kabardino-Balkaria, Russia’, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
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Photochemistry is a science dealing with changes in matter induced by light. The advent of new concepts such as photoredox catalysis and the emergence of new industrial process has given new optimism to the field. Many aspects of photochemistry and all the authors of this issue had a close link to the late Prof. Thomas Bally and it is thus with genuine emotion that CHIMIA dedicates this special issue to his memory.
It is with great pleasure that the Editorial Board of CHIMIA thanks the guest editor Prof. Dr. Christian Bochet for the successful realisation of this special issue on Photochemistry; a lively subject with continuing potential for the future.
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The Editorial Board of CHIMIA warmly thanks the guest editors Edouard Godineau, Fabrice Gallou and Urban Jenelten for organizing this excellent collection of articles that provide insight into efforts towards renewable raw material-based production and valorization of renewable resources in both industry and academia.
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The Editorial Board of CHIMIA warmly thanks the guest editors Dr. Thomas Vorherr and Prof. Dr. Jean-Louis Reymond for the successful realisation of this fascinating update on Peptide Chemistry in Switzerland.
The cover image shows the interaction between Cp40 (light grey), a peptidic complement inhibitor of the compstatin family, with its target protein, the complement opsonin C3b (teal). A Cp40-based drug candidate is currently in clinical development by Amyndas Pharmaceuticals for various inflammatory disorders. The image was prepared by Dr. Daniel Ricklin (University of Basel) using PyMOL and structural data (PDBID 7BAG) obtained by Drs. Piet Gros and Xiaoguang Xue (Utrecht University) and Dr. John D. Lambris (University of Pennsylvania).
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The CHIMIA Editorial Board would like to express its gratitude to Dr. Jan Cvengros and Prof. Catherine Housecroft for producing a very topical, interesting and useful issue under difficult circumstances. Thanks also go to all of those authors who agreed to write their articles despite the postponement of the ‘Future of Chemical Education’ symposium.
2020
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The Editorial Board of CHIMIA thanks the guest editors Prof. Dr. Roger Alberto and Prof. Dr. Heinz W. Gäggeler for putting together this very interesting set of articles demonstrating the many wide-ranging aspects of radiochemical research in Switzerland. We would also like to thank Prof. Jason Holland, University of Zurich, for designing the picture on the front cover of this issue.
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The Editorial Board of CHIMIA expresses its great appreciation to Prof. Cristina Nevado for guest editing this very interesting collection of articles on the subject of ‘Innovative Tools in Organic / Organometallic Chemistry’. Not only do these articles present excellent research, it is the first time in the nearly 75-year history of CHIMIA that all scientific articles are authored by women professors and team leaders.
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Vol. 74 No. 10
The Editorial Board of CHIMIA expresses its gratitude to the guest editors, David Spichiger, Hans Peter Lüthi and Guido Koch, for organizing this special issue highlighting the very active Startup scene in Switzerland, featuring both the wide-ranging support available and the impressive innovation displayed by the Startup companies themselves.
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The Editorial Board of CHIMIA is very grateful to the guest editors Prof. Klein Gebbink and Prof. Albrecht for organizing this special issue on Non-Noble Metals in Catalysis providing the readership with an interesting insight into the research being undertaken in the NoNoMeCat international network.
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Vol. 74 No. 5
The CHIMIA Editorial Board is very grateful to the guest editors, Roland Wohlgemuth and Hans-Peter Meyer, for creating such a fitting tribute to Oreste Ghisalba, a biotechnology pioneer, who used his knowledge, power and convictions to drive the development of the biotechnology sector in Switzerland.
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The picture for the front cover was provided by Prerna Yadav, University of Zurich, whose article on ‘Metal-Salen-based Probes for the Selective Detection of Phosphates via a Disassembly Approach’ can be found on page 252 of this issue. The image depicts the detection of pyrophosphate (PPi alias E450) via a disassembly approach using Fe(iii)-salen complexes in foodstuff (baking powder) and in mitochondria.
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The Editorial Board expresses its warmest thanks to the coordinating guest editors Dr. Mathilde Lachia and Dr. Amandine Kolleth-Krieger for their efforts in planning and collating this attractive variety of contributions and authors on the topic of ‘SCS-Syngenta Symposium: Welcome to the One-Electron World’.
2019
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The Editorial Board of CHIMIA expresses its thanks to the coordinating guest editors Torsten Luksch and Hans Peter Lüthi for their efforts in realizing this issue on Artificial Intelligence in Swiss Chemical Research, providing an excellent overview to an area of great future potential to chemistry.
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The Editorial Board of CHIMIA warmly thanks Fabrice Gallou for his great efforts in bringing together this interesting collection of articles that demonstrates the progress made in more than 20 years of Green and Sustainable Chemistry and highlights the considerable challenges that lie ahead. The original cover art was created by Catherine Gallou and digitally reworked by Prof. Sachin Handa (University of Louisville, USA).
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It is with great pleasure that the Editorial Board of CHIMIA warmly thanks Prof. A. Dieter Schlüter for his great efforts in the successful realisation of this exciting issue on ‘Dimensionality in Chemistry’.
Front cover: Dimensionality also plays an important role in the arts, as the cover picture based on the fascinating M. C. Escher drawing ‘Two Birds’ nicely illustrates. This piece combines two-dimensionality with pattern regularity, features that we will recognize again in some of the contributions of this issue. -
It is with great pleasure that the Editorial Board of CHIMIA warmly thanks Prof. Christoph Weder and his fellow guest editors Prof. Curzio Rüegg nd Dr. Lucas Montero de Espinosa for their efforts in the planning and successful realisation of this interesting and topical issue on ‘NCCR: Bio-Inspired Materials’.
2018
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It is with great pleasure that the Editorial Board of CHIMIA thanks the guest editor Dr. Xenia Beyrich-Graf for the successful realization of this special issue on Quality Aspects in Industrial Chemistry, produced on behalf of the Swiss Chemical Society Division of Industrial and Applied Chemistry.
Front cover photo: Quality control and color consistency test, 1965. Source: BASF Corporate History, photographer: Robert Häusser.
2017
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The Editorial Board of CHIMIA thanks the guest editor Prof. Holger Frauenrath for organizing such an interesting and well-chosen set of articles that serve to illustrate the many diverse aspects of the field of Polymer, Colloid, and Interface Science.
Front cover: Library of hybrid colloids produced by sequential capillarity-assisted particle assembly. See article by L. Isa et al. on page 349.
2016
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Vol. 70 No. 9Division of Industrial and Applied Chemistry: Game Changing Innovation in Chemical ProductionVol. 70 No. 9
It is with great pleasure that the Editorial Board of CHIMIA thanks Dr. Xenia Beyrich-Graf for her efforts in the planning and successful realization of this issue on ‘Division of Industrial and Applied Chemistry - Game Changing Innovation in Chemical Production’.
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It is with great pleasure that the Editorial Board of CHIMIA thanks the guest editors Prof. Dr. Thomas Ward and Prof. Dr. Daniel Müller for the successful realization of this special issue on NCCR Molecular Systems Engineering; illustrating the great value and potential of interdisciplinary science.
2015
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Vol. 69 No. 12
The Editorial Board of CHIMIA is very grateful to the guest editors Prof. Dr. Thomas J. Schmidt and Dr. Jörg Roth for the successful realization of this special issue on Energy Storage Research in Switzerland - The SCCER Heat & Electricity Storage; providing readers with an excellent overview of an interdisciplinary project with great significance for the future.
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Vol. 69 No. 10
It is with great pleasure that the Editorial Board of CHIMIA thanks the guest editor Prof. Dr. Oliver Kröcher for the successful realization of this special issue on SCCER BIOSWEET – The Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research on Bioenergy; an interdisciplinary project with great potential and significance for the future.
2014
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The Editorial Board of CHIMIA is very grateful to the guest editors Prof. C. Corminboeuf and Prof. M. Reiher for organizing this special issue Computational Chemistry in Switzerland providing the readership with an insight into current computational and theoretical chemistry research in Switzerland.
2013
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Vol. 67 No. 10Trends in Energy - Efficiency, Recovery and Production: The Role of the Chemical IndustryVol. 67 No. 10
It is with great pleasure that the Editorial Board of CHIMIA expresses its warmest thanks to the coordinating guest editor Dr. Xenia Beyrich-Graf for her efforts in planning and realizing this informative issue on a topic of great current importance.
2012
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The Editorial Board of CHIMIA warmly thanks Dr. Farnaz Moser and Dr. Reto Naef for organising a very interesting set of articles on ‘Molecular Sciences’ Outreach Activities’, highlighting the efforts made across Switzerland to interest and encourage young people to participate in the molecular sciences.
2011 was declared International Year of Chemistry by the UNESCO. Many events were held in Switzerland to allow young people to discover the molecular sciences and raise public awareness about these fields. Various companies from the chemical and pharmaceutical industry in Basel, academic institutions and the Canton Basel-City celebrated the ‘The Festival of Molecules’, during a two-day event at the University of Basel. The title picture shows tomorrow’s scientists at work.
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It is with great pleasure that the Editorial Board of CHIMIA warmly thanks Prof. Dr. Matthias Ernst and Prof. Dr. Roland Riek for their efforts in the planning and successful realization of this issue on ‘NMR Spectroscopy in Switzerland’, which provides an in-depth insight into a fascinating and important technique.
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The Editorial Board of CHIMIA is very grateful to the guest editor, Prof. Philippe Renaud, for organizing this issue illustrating the depth of interest in the growing research field of ‘Organic Free Radicals’.
Cover: Three recent reactions described in this issue of CHIMIA developed by Procter (page 399), Movassaghi (page 389) and Chiba (page 377) demonstrating the power of organic free radicals in synthesis.
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The Editorial Board of CHIMIA is very grateful to the guest editors, Prof. Eric Allémann and Prof. Muriel Cuendet, for providing this interesting range of articles highlighting the current research activities of the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne (EPGL).
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Every year the Swiss Chemical Society Fall Meeting gives young research chemists the chance to present their research to the Swiss chemical sciences community. In 2011, at EPFL, 518 chemists took up this opportunity and this issue contains articles by the best oral communication and best poster prize winners, sponsored by the Metrohm Foundation and DSM Nutritional Products respectively.
The front cover shows a range of reactions catalysed by Nickamine, developed by Prof. Xile Hu, EPFL, the 2011 Werner Prize winner.
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The cover art was kindly provided by Prof. Andrew deMello, ETH Zürich. © Dr. Claire Stanley
The cover illustrates an artist’s impression of some of the recent and future activities of the deMello group in the field of continuous and segmented flow microfluidics. Specifically, work has focused on developing microfluidic technologies for the analysis of single cells and organisms, nanomaterial synthesis, DNA amplification via the polymerase chain reaction and artificial membrane formation.
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The Editorial Board of CHIMIA would like to express its gratitude to Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Ernst for organizing this very interesting special issue marking the 30th anniversary of the invention of Scanning Tunneling Microscopy.
The cover image (5 nm x 5 nm) shows twelve propene molecules that have been arranged into the Swiss Cross on a single crystalline copper surface. © Manfred Parschau, Empa.
2011
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The Editorial Board of CHIMIA would like to thank the guest editors Susi Sturzenegger and Professors Kai Johnsson and Howard Riezman for organising this very interesting and informative introduction to the projects and scientists involved in the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Chemical Biology.
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The Editorial Board of CHIMIA would like to thank the guest editor Prof. Christian Bochet for putting together a very interesting range of articles highlighting both young researchers at the start of their independent careers and the institutional instruments that allow for their integration into the Swiss academic system.
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Vol. 65 No. 5NCCR MUST : A New Swiss Research Priority in Molecular Ultrafast Science and TechnologyVol. 65 No. 5
It is with great pleasure that the Editorial Board of CHIMIA warmly thanks Prof. Dr. Eric Vauthey and his fellow guest editors Prof. Thomas Feurer and Prof. Ursula Keller for their efforts in the planning and suc- cessful realisation of this interesting and topical issue on ‘NCCR MUST: A New Swiss Research Priority in Molecular Ultrafast Science and Technology’.
2010
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Vol. 64 No. 12The 550th Anniversary of the University of Basel : Centuries of Excellence in ChemistryVol. 64 No. 12
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With the recently announced synthesis of two isotopes of element 117 (Y. T. Oganessian et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 2010, 104, 142502) the 7th period of the table of the elements has been completed. But, as the article from Andreas Türler in his article ‘Chemical Experiments with Superheavy Elements’ on page 293 explains, chemists lag not far behind. In the last couple years all the elements up to Hs and Cn have been chemically investigated. The puzzling chemistry of element 114 is the target of currently ongoing research efforts. It is needless to state that all these experiments are conducted with few short-lived single atoms!
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On February 6, 2009, a symposium entitled ‘Frontiers in Bioinorganic Chemistry’ was held in honour of Prof. Dr. Daniel Bellus at the University of Basel. On that occasion the idea of a special issue of CHIMIA was conceived, with contributions from scientists who collaborated with Prof. Bellus during some point in their careers. The articles cover a wide range of research areas with the common denominator being chemistry. The title page shows an illustration from Robert Häner’s article ‘Nucleic Acids – Genes, Drugs, Molecular Lego and More’ on chemically modified nucleic acids which find widespread use as tools in research, as diagnostic reagents and even as pharmaceutical compounds (page 14).
2009
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The cover graphics unites all 34 recipients of the Karrer medal. Founded on the occasion of Paul Karrer‘s 80th Birthday, the Paul Karrer Medal in Gold celebrates its 50th anniversary having recognized the outstanding science of 34 molecular scientists. Between the first lecture and today there have been more than forty years of exciting and pioneering development in the field of organic chemistry and the thereby influenced related fields, such as molecular biology and structural biochemistry. Evidence of these developments is documented by the lectures of the recipients of the Paul Karrer Medal who were chosen over the course of these 40 years. Among the recipients are nine Nobel Prize winners for chemistry and for medicine and they have represented nearly all important research institutions of Europe and the USA.
2008
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It is with great pleasure that the Editorial Board of CHIMIA expresses its warmest thanks to the coordinating guest editors Dr. Bettina Steinmann and Professor Michal Borkovec for their efforts in planning and realising this extremely interesting and informative issue introducing the Polymers and Colloids Division.
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1995
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Vol. 1 No. 1-12