Anyway, we need some joy, so here's the Egyptian foreign minister being given a Lego Pyramid by the Danish foreign minister.

Just like halogen bonding, chalcogen bonding is not purely electrostatic - orbital interactions are also very important and my override the electrostatics. We recently published an illustrative example for this: inter-anion chalcogen bonding. See: pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/A...

Prof. Wolfgang Kirmse, former Chair of Organic Chemistry II at Ruhr-University Bochum, has died on October 3rd. He was known, inter alia, for many fundamental contributions to carbocation chemistry and was a very well-visible representative of our chemistry department for a long time. Rest in peace.

Please check this announcement for an early-career group leader, hosted jointly by our cluster of excellence RESOLV and the MPI Kofo. The thematic focus should be on catalysis: jobs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/jobposting/4...

In a preprint, we report a particularly interesting substrate for biaxial halogen bonding with iodine(III)-based Lewis acids: allenes. We also introduce chiral variants which allow enantiodiscrimination of allenes via NMR:

At the end of August, we said goodbye to Julian Wolf, former PhD student and postdoc. Thanks a lot for your contributions, particularly all the work to establish highly enantioselective XB catalysis, and all the best!

Wow. Check this out. Politicians actually trying to solve problems can achieve a lot! www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solu...

We welcome Katyayani and Jelke as new PhD students to our group - both will explore different aspects of halogen and chalcogen bonding organocatalysis. All the best!

We have now finally completed the renovation of our synthesis labs. Thanks to Ruhr-University Bochum for providing us with such excellent infrastructure!

A paper with a Queen song title? Check! (Even though that was an easy one). We've investigated the high pressure behavior of halogen bonding and found some unexpected solvent @solvationsci.bsky.social dependence: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Last monday, we bid farewell to Saber Mehrparvar now that his two-year postdoc stay came to an end. He tackled a difficult project, under high pressure, which will hopefully be published soon. Saber, it was a GREAT pleasure having you around, all the best for your future!

Said opus magnum (see below) is now in its final layout: highly enantioselective organocatalysis with bidentate halogen bond donors! A breakthrough that we had been hunting fir many, many years: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Today, Julian Wolf briliantly defended his thesis, congrats! His opus magnum can be found here: chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr.... Thanks to Raphael Stoll for chairing and to Gerald Dyker, Nils Metzler-Nolte for co-reviewing!

Ein Appell von S4F an die Politik Die Klima­krise und weitere Umweltkrisen (Biodiversitätsverlust, Überlastung biogeochemischer Stoffkreisläu­fe, ...) sind mittelfristig die größte Bedrohung für Sicherheit, Wirtschaft und Wohlstand, Demokratie, Zivilisation und Menschenleben. ➡️

The combined power of halogen bonding and asymmetric counteranion-directed catalysis = XB-ACDC: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/.... Thanks to @mertenlab.bsky.social for structure elucidation and to the List group for this beautiful cooperation! A perfect #RESOLV project! @solvationsci.bsky.social

So far, strong neutral halogen bond donors were often based on fluoroarenes. Here, we present ortho-carborane-based systems that clearly outcompete them: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/.... Thanks to Jas Ward and Kari Rissanen for the X-ray analyses and to Sandro Keller for assistance with ITC.

We are hiring! Please share, thanks!

After a one-year hiatus on this platform, we have decided to move here for good - it's just a so much nicer place than the other one... PS: For all biochemists and biologists who have started to follow us: thank you for your interest, but be aware that we don't really work much in these areas...

We all wish you Merry Christmas and a great start into the New Year!

We wish you - and in particular our three followers - merry Christmas and a great start into the new year!