Our collaborative work with @carlosmportela.bsky.social is now out in Matter! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Tldr: we made magnetic composite microdevices by growing magnetic particles within two-photon lithography printed polymer parts!

One of the more unusual Benchy we've printed recently.

Spring in CH

New preprint from the group! tldr: We explore the thermomechanical properties of semicrystalline poly(cyclooctene) (pCOE) 3D printed via photoROMP! 1/4 chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10....

Took a little bit of time but I finally got my first big grant! Some observations: 1. My eval panel was chemistry which was quite unexpected. It's usually engineering. 2. Not a single "PI is too young to lead a project" comment. I guess getting some corresponding author papers out did the trick.

"For some perspective, the average first 105-degree day of the year normally occurs on May 22nd,” NWS said in a statement."

Such creative work!

Had to do a double take when I saw the lunch menu for tomorrow. Mmhm. Tarte Choléra.

Brainwashing, 2026 edition. This paper shows how X's algorithmic feed shifts people's views rightwards. It's a sophisticated, highly effective form of reorientation. And it is utterly chilling. If you're still on that platform, unhook yourself now. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Receiving academic emails with good (ish) news is always a game of "is this real" or "am I being phished?"

The MSCA postdoc fellowship funding scores this year are absolutely brutal. Funding thresholds for some disciplines are as high as 97%! It’s almost a lottery at this point

George Rossman was one of the kindest professors I knew during my time at Caltech. Incredible scientist with an infectious passion for science. I have fond memories of him showing me his collection of rocks and metals that he kept in his office. RIP www.caltech.edu/about/news/c...

And we made the cover! This is a real optical image of copper dendrites growing into our hydrogels during our in-situ precipitation process.

Me when an older European person asks me where in China is Singapore 😅

We've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n

Proof

So so cool

Brilliant little online tool: Spin the globe and see what your life would have been like had you gotten a different draw in the place-of-birth lottery h/t @leightjessica.bsky.social on LinkedIn

I write grants so my students can print unicorns

Lac Neuchâtel

Conference registration fees are getting out of hand. I know its part of the tenure game but I can't justify dropping 800 USD to go give a talk.

Our picture "Eye Spy" made it to the Chempics bracket! Lots of other beautiful pictures on display as well. Go check them out! #chemsky #matsky cen.acs.org/education/sc...

Testing out some new printing technology :D

Looks like my early setbacks have been for naught 😬😅

It’s fondue season up in here

Test print of our new nano/micro-scale printer!

Saw the swiss alps with a colleague yesterday ✈️

It’s here! (Many thanks to the funding agencies and colleagues for making this happen)

Just saw this on my computer. I didn't think I worked this hard 😅

Day off

Lots of cool research being done at EPFL MatSci!

One of the pictures that we took as part of our recent Adv. Mater. study got featured in @cenmag.bsky.social Chemistry in Pictures! cen.acs.org/materials/3-...

Beautiful science in a beautiful location.

Woke up to an announcement saying that we’ll be landing in Bilbao shortly. Which would have been great if I wasn’t flying to San Sebastián…

Andddd it's now out in Advanced Materials! doi.org/10.1002/adma... Here, we show a new method of transforming hydrogels into ceramics and metals with low conversion shrinkages and high material densities. (1/7) #chemsky #matsky

It's 2025, almost 2026. If you're gonna use chatgpt to write your entire research statement, at least make sure the references are not 100% fake.

We have some new positions available in the group! (PhD student + Research intern) Details can be found here: www.epfl.ch/labs/alchemy... #chemsky #matsky

What a beautiful location!

Sigh.

That is a big increase marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/news/msca-po...

Trying to go to more European conferences = first time in Poland in over 10 years!

It took 6 months of review but this paper is finally accepted 😮‍💨🫡 It has changed / expanded so much since our first submission. Really excited to to show what we’ve done!

I felt this in my soul.

Engineering: When you need to stir something that is less dense than your solvent.

Hot days (>30C) without AC We are so back

Guess we ran out of balloons

60 years of independence! Majulah Singapura 🇸🇬

Love me some annealing twins

Over the past 6 months, we’ve been dabbling (very very lightly) into the world of lab automation. Wise words from the engineer leading this project today.

TIL that you can get hydrochloric acid like this. I have no idea why we bought this. It’s giving boxed wine / to-go vibes.