Due to the current pandemic (Covid-19), there is an increased risk of infection through travel abroad. Since we did not want to endanger the health of our speakers and the participants, the first conference of the Young Chemists Austria, which would have originally taken place in Innsbruck, Austria, was turned into an online event.

A view behind the scenes

We were surprised by the high level of interest in the Young Chemists Summit and the international participation. In fact the participants were widely scattered around the world as visible on the map below. We received registrations from 5 continents and many different countries!

Map of locations of participants of the YCS 2020

The Young Chemists Summit started with the online postersession on Twitter on Monday the 14th of September. All submitted posters could be found under the hashtag #ycs20. The posters of the winners of the poster prizes can be found below. Congratulations to the winners! Lorenz Lindenthal won the poster prize for the best abstract and best presentation of his scientific research, sponsored by the EYCN and endowed with 150€! The award for the most beautiful poster went to Marina Kinzelmann. This award was sponsored by Lactan and endowed with 150€. Additionally, Verena Resch, Luminous Lab, sponsored access to one of her 3D rendering online courses, the card game pKace and some goodies.

Posters of the winners of the postersession (Lindenthal, Kinzelmann, Karges)

On Monday 21st of September 2020, three workshops were offered to the participants.

In the workshop “Data Analysis with Python” basic programming techniques of the programming language Python were taught by Emanuel Ehmki. In this interactive course the participants learned how to use Python on their own computers. The aim of this workshop was to equip the participants with the necessary tools for automatic processing of their measurement data.

Verena Resch from Luminous Lab taught the participants of the workshop “Make Science beautiful again” how to make the most of their graphs in publications, conference posters and talks to deliver the message to their audience in the best possible way. Therefore, participants learned e.g. the basics about color theory and color systems as well as when to use the correct image format and much more!

The “Industrial Scale-up” workshop was held by the process chemist Dr. Philipp Selig. Chemical reactions work differently on a larger scale because of aspects like heat transfer and mass transport. If a proper scale-up is not performed, the results may be catastrophic. To avoid expensive and dangerous mistakes, these aspects have to be taken into account. Participants of this workshop could get an insight into how to properly scale up lab reactions and syntheses to an industrial level.

Workshop: Make Science beautiful again

In the afternoon the adapted virtual excursions took place. As it was not possible to visit the NOI-Techpark and ADLER LACKE in person, the participants could get an insight into these companies by different lectures, followed by a questioning and answer session.

Participants got a glimpse of the work at NOI Techpark in Bolzano (IT). After Sepp Walder made a short introduction about NOI, they received an insight of the Bioenergy and Biofuels Lab by Prof. Marco Baratieri. Dr. Peter Robatscher then presented the research done in the Laboratory for Flavour & Metabolites from Laimburg Research Center. The session ended with a lecture by Dr. Michael Atzwanger on the food start-up HiWeiss.

NOI Techpark, Bolzano (IT) © Alessandra Chemollo

Mag. Michael Enders, from ADLER Lacke in Schwaz, started with the basics of coating production, the participants learned about the components of the varnish and that the development of coatings is a very complex process. Job opportunities in the research & development department of ADLER were also mentioned during this very interesting presentation.

ADLER Lacke, Schwaz (AT)

Tuesday 22nd of September 2020

During the opening, Béatrice Daleiden, chairwoman of the Austrian Young Chemists Network, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Hubert Huppertz, Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy and Deputy Head at the University of Innsbruck and former Vice President of the GÖCH as well as Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Christian Huck from the University of Innsbruck and Vice President of the GÖCH, introduced the Austrian Young Chemists Network, the University of Innsbruck and the Austrian Chemical Society (GÖCH) to the audience.

The Young Chemists Summit was originally planned to take place in Innsbruck, but since this was unfortunately not possible, the participants could at least get some impressions in a short movie about the University of Innsbruck.

We had the great honor to welcome Professor Dr. Benjamin List, from the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Germany, for the opening Lecture of our first Young Chemists Summit. Prof List has co-founded the field of organocatalysis and is developing new catalysis concepts. He has discovered the natural amino acid proline as an efficient catalyst and thus made organocatalysis actually possible. Natural substances instead of metals could be used as catalysts in chemistry for the very first time. Professor List introduced the audience to his work in a very informative lecture.

“The role of chemists in a sustainable world” was the lecture from Professor Dr. David Cole-Hamilton. His most recent work has been concerned with making commodity and fine chemicals including plastics and pharmaceuticals from bio-derived waste oils that are by-products of other processes such as food production or paper manufacturing. In this very diversified lecture Prof. Cole-Hamilton pointed out how the chemical society is changing, with regard to female scientists, modernisation and the general role of chemistry in the world. The most important point Prof Cole-Hamilton discussed is our role as chemists and what we can do to contribute to a sustainable world.

During the Poster Pitching, the authors of the three best abstracts presented their poster. Mister Agrawal: “Mechanophotonics: Flexible Single-Crystal Organic Waveguides and Circuits”, Susanne Huber: “Microextraction of cannabidiol from natural cosmetics using a new room temperature ionic liquid as extracting agent” and Lorenz Lindenthal: “Polarization assisted Exsolution of Metal Nanoparticles from Doped Perovskites for Enhanced Catalytic Performance”.

Posters of the Posterpitching (Huber, Lindenthal, Agrawal)

After a lunch break, the program continued with the Industrial Speeddating, where the Austrian Drug Screening Institute (ADSI), EVONIK and Kalb Analytik were introduced by short videos. Also Chemistry Europe was introduced by three short videos: “The world as we know it is changing. We’re embracing that change and are excited to announce our new identity and new focus.” In the first video PROF. DR. IR. WECKHUYSEN detailed how students can succeed, then PROF. DR. ANGELA CASINI talked about collaboration being key to success and in the last video, PROF. DR. FERINGA talked about the importance of society publishing. If you want to rewatch the videos of Chemistry Europe, please follow this link:

https://secure.wiley.com/DiscoverChemistryEurope?elq_mid=43846&elq_cid

Industrial Speeddating: participant companies

In the Panel discussion, sponsored by Cura, former students of the University of Innsbruck talked about their experience at the beginning of their working career and discussed what it was like to find themselves in everyday working life. This session was moderated by Robin Poller, also an alumni from the University of Innsbruck, and as speakers, Ortner Teresa, Huber Veronika, Mairhofer Elisabeth, Daxenbichler Anna and Stonig Marlies were invited.

Panel Discussion

“How to design technologies for the recycling of CO₂ into value-added chemicals and polymers.” In his lecture, Professor Dr. Arjan Kleij from the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia in Spain, gave an insight into his main research interests. Prof. Kleij started his introduction with incentives for the use of waste and CO₂ in chemical synthesis. In his talk, Prof Kleij​ discussed “From linear to circular: what can we do as chemists?​“ Therefore, in the first part Prof Kleij talked about catalysis strategies to recycle/valorize CO₂, whereas the second part of his lecture focused on creating new polymers from renewable resources.

Professor Dr. Christina White from the University of Illinois in the USA gave us a talk on “C—H Oxidation for Late-Stage Functionalization''. The White group aims to study and develop selective, catalytic, sustainable C—H oxidation reactions for broad use in organic synthesis that do not require use of directing groups. Therefore they designed a series of catalysts, which can be used to modify molecules in late stages of the synthesis. They have contributed novel palladium/sulfoxide, iron and manganese PDP, as well as manganese phthalocyanine catalysts that are now commercially available (Aldrich,Strem, TCI). These catalysts are used academically and industrially to functionalize all types of C(sp3)—H bonds, including aliphatics, under preparative conditions with predictable and catalyst-controlled site-selectivities in complex molecule settings.

In the evening the conference dinner took place in Innsbruck on a very small scale, appropriate for times of a pandemic situation.

Some impressions of the hub in Innsbruck

Wednesday, 23rd of September 2020

The last day of the Young Chemists Summit started with a lecture on explosive materials from Prof. Dr. Thomas Klapötke. Prof. Klapötke not only discussed lead-free primary explosives, but also energetic polymers, not-polluting pyrotechnical compositions and much more! The winner of this year's Young Chemists Sustainability Award, Peter Fürk, had the possibility to present his research on the topic of “High permittivity materials in organic solar cells” at the Young Chemists Summit. For more details of his work, please visit the article about the Young Chemists Sustainability Award 2020.

The closing lecture was held by Prof. Dr. Bernd Giese from Fribourg, Switzerland in the hub in Fribourg. His lecture on “How Anaerobic Microorganisms Survive Environmental Stress. A Chemist's View.”, which took place in a hub location in Fribourg in front of a small public, was streamed to the other participants. As Prof. Giese is an outstanding expert in the field of bioorganic radical- and photoreactions, he gave us an insight in his main research topics: radical reactions in biological systems, electron transfer, signal transduction, stereoselective synthesis with radicals and biradicals and new photocleavable protecting groups.

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Organizing Committee of the first Young Chemists Summit, from left to right:
RR Innbruck (upper picture): Vanessa Moll, Liane Perktold, Andreas Schöler, Virginia Celestre, Valentina Stock, Walburga Bischofberger, Patrick Bonke, Julian Cardini, Julian Wollrab and Sabine Lerch (not on photo).
Leading board (lower picture): Bianca Brandl, Felix Purtscher, Béatrice, Daniela Söllinger, Kirill Faust

Thanks to our sponsors who enabled this online conference!