Network meetings

A key activity of the Excellent Nordic Chemistry Network will be to organize annual meetings. These will be organized as Summer schools and Workshops.

1. Summer schools: Three summer schools will be arranged by the Network, and will cover topics that are not included in the PhD curriculum:

Summer school 1:

Focus on analysis and synthesis planning of complex organic molecules.

Summer school 2:

Focus on medicinal chemistry and biological testing; development of drug candidates.

Summer school 3:

Focus on emerging technologies in organic chemistry.

The summer schools will be held during one week at an off-campus site and the location will rotate between the participating campuses. Authorities from both academia and industry within each specific area will be invited to cover the various topics. Each summer school will end with an examination in order to ensure that the Ph.D. students can include the courses in their curricula.

2. Workshops and seminars: An annual workshop accompanied by seminars will be organized by the Network.

The workshops will bring together the Network and will provide opportunities for the young researchers to present their results and receive a critical feedback on their research. The seminars will focus on topics at the forefront of organic synthesis and drug design. Whereas the workshops aim at scientific exchange within the network, the seminars focus on complementary skills. Through this scheme the young researchers will (i) be trained in oral presentations, (ii) discuss the conclusions reached from their results, and (iii) discuss and argue the continuation of their projects with peers. The conclusions from each workshop will be compiled in a Network Report that details the progress of each group. The report will be distributed to all members of the network.

Ulterior Network Activities:

Proposer
Date, place, meeting...

Ari Koskinen
2011, Sep 1-2 days, Helsinki, workshop: Computational Chemistry

Ari Koskinen
2011 Oct 1-2 days, Helsinki, Short course:  "Org Met Chem - Nat Prod"

Ari Koskinen
2011 Autumn 1 week, Helsinki, Short course: "Asym Synth of- Nat Prod"

Eugenijus Butkus
2011, Oct 13-15, Vilnius, National Chemistry Conference


Norway (Odd Gautun)
2012 Jan 12-15, Lillehammer, Norwegian Organic Winter Meeting

Paul Helquist
2012 Spring 2-4 weeks?, Stockholm, Organic Synthesis Course

Uno Maeorg
2012 June 1-2 days, "BOSS Premeeting"

Ulterior Network Activities:

Proposer
Date, place, meeting...

Ari Koskinen
2011, Sep 1-2 days, Helsinki, workshop: Computational Chemistry

Ari Koskinen
2011 Oct 1-2 days, Helsinki, Short course:  "Org Met Chem - Nat Prod"

Ari Koskinen
2011 Autumn 1 week, Helsinki, Short course: "Asym Synth of- Nat Prod"

Eugenijus Butkus
2011, Oct 13-15, Vilnius, National Chemistry Conference


Norway (Odd Gautun)
2012 Jan 12-15, Lillehammer, Norwegian Organic Winter Meeting

Paul Helquist
2012 Spring 2-4 weeks?, Stockholm, Organic Synthesis Course

Uno Maeorg
2012 June 1-2 days, "BOSS Premeeting"

The summer schools will be held during one week at an off-campus site and the location will rotate between the participating campuses. Authorities from both academia and industry within each specific area will be invited to cover the various topics. Each summer school will end with an examination in order to ensure that the Ph.D. students can include the courses in their curricula.

Feedback on NordForsk meetings

"I would like to express my gratitude for the possibility to participate in events organized within the Excellent Nordic Chemistry network (sponsored by NordForsk). I participated in two such meetings – in Uppsala, Sweden (April 2011) and Lillehammer, Norway (January 2012). These events gave me the possibility to present the current results of my PhD project to the multinational chemical community and explore the last achievements of other scientific groups. NordForsk meetings provided a good platform to make oral and poster presentations outside my home university.

These meetings in Uppsala and Lillehammer were a part of bigger scientific events (Oskar Widman Symposium and OVK27) where reputed speakers were invited to give lectures. Last, but not least, I have acquired new friends and contacts from different countries."

Oleg Lebedev (Tartu University, Estonia), PhD student

"Thanks to NordForsk’s Excellent Nordic Chemistry project, I was able to attend the 27th Organic Chemistry Winter Meeting in Lillehammer, Norway. The meeting took place between the 12-15th of January 2012. I contributed to the venue with a 20 min oral presentation with the title ‘Two methods for enantioselective synthesis of anti-β-hydroxy-α-amido esters via transfer hydrogenation’.

The meeting was very interesting and rewarding thanks to the high level of chemistry presented during oral and poster presentations. The invited lecturers were inspiring and fun to listen to. On the organization side, we the participants felt well taken care of. There were downhill and cross-country skiing, competitions and displays from the sponsors, and good food and drinks to be enjoyed. The high number of participating student, professors and chemical industry/institutes representatives provided constructive discussions during breaks and after the daily program. Although being a venue mainly for Norwegian scientist, I and other non-natives felt very welcome to attend. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole event and am thankful to the NordForsk project for financing my attendance at the meeting."

PiretVillo (Tartu University, Estonia & KTH-Stockhom, Sweden), PhD student

"I became associated with NordForsk via a workshop on computational chemistry that was held in Helsinki on 20.-22. September 2011.

Overall I have only good memories regarding the event. The choice of asking Per-Ola Norrby to lecture us was a very good decision. He did an excellent job of giving interesting lectures and also teaching us through exercises. Even though I previously had a significant computational chemistry background (my bachelor thesis was based on a computational study), I still found this workshop to be very. As Per-Ola’s research topics are relatively similar to mine (computational studies of catalytic systems), it gave me insightful knowledge on how else the existing problems could be approached. Also the stronger emphasis on the molecular mechanics side of the computational chemistry was very insightful, as in my group, it has found only modest use so far.

The organizational part of this event was also well executed. Although information moved rather slowly prior to the event, I still received all the needed information before my arrival.

To sum it all up, your job organizing and executing this event has been marvelous."

IndrekKalvet (University of Tartu, Estonia), Msc Student

"The course in computational chemistry was excellent, the teacher was very professional, and I certainly learned a lot."

Peter Janssen (DTU, Copenhagen, Denmark) PhD student.

"I attended the OKV 27 in Lillehammer this January thanks to Excellent Nordic Chemistry, and for that I am thankful. I relished the opportunity to meet people outside my group working on similar topics as well as researchers focused on completely different themes (even a rocket scientist).

I look forward to attending other similar events, in particular the Copenhagen conference this January.

This was my first conference and it proved tremendously satisfying."

Alban Cadu (Uppsala University, Sweden), PhD student.

"I wish to express my great gratitude for the funding which enabled me travel to the Lillehammer conference. The conference was inspiring and gave me new ideas and viewpoints related to my own work.  Another important aspect of this conference was the ability to connect socially with other young professionals within the chemical industry. This has been a great experience for me and I wish once again to thank NordForsk and the Excellent Nordic Chemistry network."

Martin Hennum (University of Oslo), PhD student

"I greatly appreciate the opportunity to attend the Winter Meeting with the Nordic Excellent Chemistry group. The program for the meeting was very interesting and inspiring. The intra-network meeting gave me a good overview of the organic chemistry being conducted in the Nordic countries. It was rewarding to be at the meeting with the group: I learned to know people from all the Nordic countries (especially the PhD students) and I got to know differences and similarities between our labs."

Mette T. Petersen (DTU), PhD student

"This Year event was, in my opinion the best meeting I had chance to attend so far (this was my third time attending). Thanks to the network, the overall number of participating countries increased, as well as the scope of the whole conference.

"Even though the Organic Chemistry Winter Meeting has a character of a national conference, participation of another countries like Denmark, Sweden or Estonia made this conference more international and of higher level, thanks to the high standard of the oral presentations prepared by the members of the network.

If possible, participation of the Excellent Nordic Chemistry Network should be considered also next year."

JindrichKania (Oslo University), PhD student

"I visited the NordForsk summer school of 2010 in Jyväskülä and I am very grateful for the chance to be there. I think that this summer school was a great event and have mostly positive memories of it. I had a chance to give oral presentation about my work (computational modeling of palladium catalysis) which was very useful as I got a lot of feedback to my results. I also enjoyed our visit of the local chemistry department, which was very useful for me as at that time we were in the process of setting up our own laboratory. Finally I would say that the event was very well.

LauriSikk (Tartu University), PhD student

I was able to attend the OKV 27 in Lillehammer this month thanks to the NordForsk funding and the Excellent Nordic Chemistry network. I was very interested by many of the presentations that were directly related to my field (organometallic catalysis). Many of the posters showed chemistry that I was previously unaware of and I am very grateful to the funding organization for giving me this opportunity."

Taigang Zhou (Uppsala University, Sweden), PhD student.