Guest Editorial: The 3rd Transatlantic Frontiers in Chemistry Symposium

Abstract

GUEST EDITORIAL DOI: 10.1002/chem.201303417 The 3rd Transatlantic Frontiers in Chemistry Symposium Anastassia N. Alexandrova,* [a] Stefan M. Huber,* [b] and Ali Tavassoli* [c] T he 3rd Transatlantic Frontiers of Chemistry Symposium, set of topics that were grouped into related sessions. The meeting started with an address by representatives of the or- ganizing committee (Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, American Chemical Society, and Royal Society of Chemis- try; Figure 2), followed by remarks from the conference chair, Prof. Dr. Hans-Dieter Arndt: “you are in one of the most beautiful parts of Germany, with plenty of things to do and see in the area. Unfortunately you will be spending quite a bit of your time during the coming days in this lecture theater…” (Figure 3). Each delegate was then asked to standup and introduce them- selves, and it was immediately clear, that despite the involve- ment of only four national chemical societies, this was a truly international confer- ence, with multiple countries represented; a running theme of this section was that most delegates were dual nationals and many were working in Figure 1. Kloster Seeon: the setting for the 3rd Transatlantic Frontiers of Chemistry Symposium; photo: A. a different country from which Alexandrova. they had done their first degree. The international composi- tion of the meeting was further commented upon by Prof. [a] Dr. A. N. Alexandrova Dr. Helmut Schwarz (President of the Humboldt Founda- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry tion) during his after dinner lecture, as being in keeping University of California Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA 90095-1569 (USA) with Alexander von Humboldts vision of science without E-mail: ana@chem.ucla.edu borders (Figure 4). held at Kloster Seeon in Germany on August 8–11, 2013 brought together 60 early-career chemistry academics from Germany (20), UK (18), USA (16) and for the first time, Brazil (6). The aims of the conference were to enable inter- national, multidisciplinary networking and collaboration op- portunities in the relaxing settings of a beautiful old monas- tery by a lake (Figure 1). The program included a diverse [b] Dr. S. M. Huber Department Chemie, Technische Universitt Mnchen 85747, Garching (Germany) E-mail: stefan.m.huber@tum.de [c] Dr. A. Tavassoli Chemistry, University of Southampton Southampton, SO17 1BJ (UK) and Cancer Sciences, University of Southampton Southampton SO16 6YD (UK) E-mail: a.tavassoli@southampton.ac.uk Chem. Eur. J. 2013, 19, 15777 – 15783 Functional Materials and Catalysts T he scientific program opened with the first session on functional materials, which promise solutions to contempo- rary energy conversion and storage problems through effi- cient catalysis, CO 2 sequestration, and more. Through the most advanced methods of material synthesis, design, and 2013 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim