On my way to the PhD defenses of two of my students at the University of Würzburg, maybe the final endpoint of this chapter of my academic life. Finally daring to travel from Helsinki to Germany only by ferry and train. Right now riding the overnight train from Stockholm to Hamburg.

Just came across this very interesting paper on academic ethics by Yasemim J Erden. Perfect weekend or summer read for anybody interested in addressing the rampant issues in current academia around the replicstion crisis and the obvious failure of academic metrics. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

What a wrap-up of #EPF2025. Florian Kaps, PhD student in our lab, received one of the poster prizes. We are very proud of his great work and thankful to allwho voted for Florian! Also congrats to all other awardees, including Julian Schmidt (Frey Lab) and one from the Jordan group at TU Dresden.

Very proud supervisor! My team won the pub quiz at #EPF2025!!

That's fantastic!! In particular that you donated the prize money!

Florian Kaps, PhD researcher in our group giving a short poster pitch at #EPF2024.

This week our PhD student @celinekuchler.bsky.social is attending the 10th European #Crystallography School in Ohrid, Macedonia. She presents a poster "Controlled Crystallization and Morphological Studies of All-organic Salt Particles" and is looking forward to interesting lectures and discussions!

My train is my office! On the way to #EPF2025 in Groningen, enjoying my favorite music and the scenery were I grew up, Germany's flatlands...

Great talk by Jörg Tiller at #EPF2025

And here is some science from @metrazymes.bsky.social members at the European Polymer Congress @epf2025.bsky.social: PI Prof. Nico Bruns @bruns-lab.bsky.social presenting enzymatic radical polymerizations!

Andrea on the big stage! Indeed,a very large lecture theater @epf2025.bsky.social!

It’s a great pleasure to host the group of Prof. Arn Mignon @kuleuvenuniversity.bsky.social under the support of @unaeuropa.bsky.social @helsinki.fi Looking forward to the trip to Leuven soon!

Day 2 is starting at #EPF2025. From our Lab, Maurice Pütz is presenting his poster on bioinks (#289) Florian T. Kaps a poster on our cool lipopolymer platform (#291). But the star of the day, Yuquan Chi will present in the big Theaterzaal her work on starpolymers for pancreatic cancer radiotherapy..

Askican Hacioglu just presented results from his PhD thesis and Ilia Elizbarian's MSc thesis at #EPF2025. Really interesting results on the tionation of different water-soluble amide bearing polymers. We are still working on the full picture, but really interesting, non-trivial effects observed.

#EPF2025 is starting!! Katja Loos is opening, looking forward to a great week, great talks and inspiration! @polymerreaction.bsky.social

*looking for reviewers who reviewed a recent opinion piece of mine* An unusual request, I know. I wrote an opinion article on my experience as trans person in science upon invitation of a journal. Despite mostly good reviews, the article was rejected. #trans #academicchatter

You want to crosslinked bioprinted samples with red light, because it is particularly safe and penetrates deep? But you don't like that the products are colored, as they need to interact with the red light? We have a solution! advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Recently, we published a very nice paper with the team of @daltonlab.bsky.social on volumetric 3D printing. Check out the videos too! Now I brewed the corresponding paperbeer. A Westcoast IPA called Volumetric Vision. It turned out quite alright! advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Chemistry is the perfect mixture of hands-on work, deep theoretical scientific concepts of the foundations of matter and all things and incredibly creative. In what other profession can you think of new molecules that never before existed, make them from scratch and test their properties? #chemistry

It has been quite a while in the making, but now finally out, Julian's work, wrapped up by Aaron, shows new thiophene bearing poly(2-oxazoline)s and poly(2-oxazine)s. These could be quite interesting precursors for conductive polymers. Have a look! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Auschwitz was at the end of a long process. It did not start from gas chambers. This hatred was gradually developed by humans. From ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder. Auschwitz took time.

One of the reasons I moved the lab to Finland was the prospect to get more into computational modeling of complex nanomedicines. Awesome work by Josef Kehrein, with Alex Bunker using the LUMI supercomputer. He studied LNP with different lipopolymers and investigated the surface interactions.

Back in my student days there as a German app called StudiVZ. Basically same as facebook before facebook was in Germany. I thought it just stole my lifetime. Facebook worse it seems...

Moving Beyond PEG: Poly(2-oxazolines) and Poly(2-oxazines) Alter the Surface Properties of Lipid Nanoparticles Authors: Josef Kehrein, Robert Luxenhofer, Alex Bunker DOI: 10.26434/chemrxiv-2025-v4cjh

Take a look at our latest publication in Adv. Mater. Interfaces together with Rafael B. Lira. This paper deals with properties of Pickering Stabilized Water-In-Water Emulsions: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Great to work with @luxenhoferlab.bsky.social again and the Lindberg Lab at Knight Campus, who are always great partners.

Very interesting work of Theresa from the Pöppler Lab at the University of Würzburg. She investigated hydrophobic block derivatives of our previously introduced triblock copolymers based hydrogels. Very nice insights from advanced NMR spectroscopy, as always from the Pöppler lab!!

Yesterday I gave a difficult talk at the annual Pride in Science event in our faculty. It got more emotional than I thought, and I'm still struggling with recollecting my thoughts.