We are hiring! Please spread, thanks! PS: Note that all applications have to go through our university's new online portal, see link in the pdf.

Almost a double-header! Last Friday and this Monday Dhananjoy and Christoph defended their theses, with great success. Thank you for your contributions and all the best to both of you!

Start of RESOLV’s third funding period With the beginning of the new year, the Cluster of Excellence RESOLV has officially started its third funding period (2026 to 2032) with new Research Areas. Learn more about our new Research Areas: www.solvation.de/research #SolvationScience

Chiral control through halogen bonding could be the next frontier for organocatalysis – allow Victoria Atkinson to guide you through the hisory, complexities and exciting new prospects on the horizon.

Congratulations to the Bach group (@bach-lab.bsky.social) for this very nice Co-catalyzed asymmetric C-H alkylation, to which we contributed a few DFT calculations: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Thank you, ChemistryWorld, and Victoria in particular, for featuring some of our work!

Two PhD positions still available! Please check the job openings! PhD Position 1 (application deadline Jan 5th): www.uni-due.de/karriere/ste... PhD Position 2 (application deadline Jan 22nd): www.uni-due.de/karriere/ste... Apply with cover letter and CV! Re-posts appreciated!

In November, we welcomed Lisa-Marie as a new PhD student. She will tackle some carborane-based halogen bond donors. All the best!

During our investigation on multidentate ortho-carborane-based halogen bond donors, we noticed that they from very interesting co-crystals with halides. Here is the full study - including a very rare sandwich complex with 6-fold coordination! chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

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!