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.

Out now in ACS Materials Letters pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/... We developed a method to fabricate composites with volumetric additive manufacturing (VAM). The study was led by Yiming Ji, a grad student in my group, with support from @xolo3d.bsky.social Here's a little 🧵(1/8)

The first research paper of the group just got accepted! The review process always takes longer than expected but I'm glad it'll be out there soon :D

Question for editors: in what situations do you send out a revised paper to additional reviewers? (Beyond the original set of reviewers) I assume when one of the original reviewers don’t respond/decline to review? Or if it’s a split vote? Anything else?

A great article by @hormiga.bsky.social scienceforeveryone.science/p/the-power-...

Gotta celebrate the small wins: a nice 3D printed “stent” we made recently :D

My group planned a mini chem-themed scavenger hunt. 10/10 for effort 🙏

I spent way too long trying to figure how these work. Super cool how they look from different angles. Apparently these are really common/popular 3D prints? I learn something new everyday. I bet there is an academic paper on this somewhere.

Putting the east in Easter 🇸🇰

10 hours later and we are in Vienna. Almost there! The connectivity and quality of European trains are truly amazing.

11 hr train journey today.

Took a little longer than expected but here’s the preprint: doi.org/10.26434/che...

What’s this? A spanner for ants?

Wild that this was made in 1789. (Patek-Phillip Museum, Geneva)