|
|
| (2 intermediate revisions by one other user not shown) |
| Line 1: |
Line 1: |
| '''BLOG FOR MASERAS GROUP'''
| | {{ delete| reason= moved to Github }} |
| | |
| '''*** Nov 6th, 2018 ***'''
| |
| | |
| Here I will introduce scientific (or not) comments which I think can be interesting for the group.
| |
| | |
| This is semi-confidential, as is free access for group members, but it is not intended to be made publicly accessible. Just in case unkind opinions about outsiders are given.
| |
| | |
| In principle, you are welcome to introduce your comments, but please mark them clearly.
| |
| | |
| Feliu
| |
| | |
| | |
| '''*** Nov 15th, 2018 ***'''
| |
| | |
| As you may/should know, I will be out of Tarragona in a conference tour in China from Monday Nov 19th to Wednesday Nov 28th.
| |
| | |
| I want to use this chance to explain some of my criteria on deciding which conferences to attend. This is of course the view from my (professor) perspective, which does not transfer exactly to the view from the student side.
| |
| | |
| In this particular case, I received and invitation from Prof Rongzhen Liao, from Wuhan, to give a talk in a conference he was organizing. Prof Liao did his PhD/post-doc in Europe (Stockholm, Mülheim), and I know him from those times. Also, I invited him to the meeting we organized in summer 2018 in Tarragona, which he attended. So, it is politically correct to attend the conference he is organizing. The list of speakers is full of old acquaintances, so all is good on that side.
| |
| | |
| As I was going to China, I thought about my former graduate student Chunhui Liu, who has a position there, and had insistently invited me to visit her university in my two previous trips to China. I contacted her, and she has organized for me two talks in Henan province, in Zhengzhou and Xuchang.
| |
| | |
| As a cultural information for the non-Shaofei members of the group, Hubei (where Wuhan is located) and Henan provinces are in central China. Hubei has a population of 59 milion, and Henan a population of 95 milion. This is in line with the most populated countries in Europe. And of course, I was not aware of it before preparing this trip. Do not let your Eurocentrism (or Mediterranean-centrism) fool you!
| |
| | |
| This does not tranlate directly to your choice of conferences, but some guiding principles are there. Always (try to) make a presentation (oral better for older phd students, post-docs), choose "serious" conferences, try to make connections, enjoy the travel, beware of the group political needs for conference attendance. This trip to China ticks for me most of the cases. I get invitation to talk, the conference is serious, I am meeting old acquaintances, I get to learn about Chinese research. The trip has the inconvenience of requiring two plane changes, which is clearly suboptimal for my taste; and I may freeze under the cold weather that is expected. But such is life.
| |
| | |
| Feliu
| |
| | |
| | |
| '''*** Dec 5th, 2018 ***'''
| |
| | |
| After this long silence, several topics:
| |
| | |
| 1. The long-awaited list with the task assignments following our group seminar:
| |
| | |
| [http://aliga.iciq.es/wiki/images/b/b0/Tasks-maserasg-v1.2.pdf]
| |
| | |
| I will start tomorrow spamming some of you with stuff for your duties.
| |
| | |
| 2. My recent trip to China was very interesting. I gave three talks in one week. I presented twice our work on microkinetic modeling, and once our work on mechanochemistry. I got also some interesting ideas that I will discuss with you in due time.
| |
| | |
| 3. There are some bad news concerning our research budget for next year from the ICIQ administration. I cannot give my detailed opinion because this blog is not fully confidential, but things do not look good. In any case, I expect we will be able to keep all of our salaries going forward.
| |
| | |
| Best,
| |
| Feliu
| |
| | |
| | |
| '''*** Dec 10th, 2018 ***'''
| |
| | |
| About funding. Last week I had a meeting with the ICIQ powers that be about our research budget for next year. The bad news is that it has been cut by 20% without any fault on our side. The good news is that we will be able to make it through 2019 without salary cuts or personnel losses. Unless things change we will not be able to upgrade the computer cluster, but so be it. Things will hopefully improve for 2020.
| |
| | |
| Best,
| |
| Feliu
| |
| | |
| '''*** Dec 20th, 2018 ***'''
| |
| | |
| Two pieces of information:
| |
| | |
| -as you may know, I will be taking a two-week holiday starting Dec 23th. I am going to Argentina on a family holiday, and I will return to ICIQ on January 8th. I will try to check the e-mail, but one never knows. Also ,today Thursday 20th is my last day in ICIQ this year because of possible bcn-tgn travel disruptions tomorrow Friday.
| |
| | |
| -as you have probably realized, Jihan Lubani has disappeared from our lab. I am trying to contact her, with no result. So have been Núria V and the ICIQ administration. We will see what happens
| |
| | |
| Merry winter solstice!
| |
| Feliu
| |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| '''*** January 8th, 2019 ***'''
| |
| | |
| I regret to inform you that Jihan Lubani has decided to quit her PhD project at ICIQ. She has communicated by e-mail that she will not return. Her contract is now being canceled.
| |
| | |
| Jihan has not been very informative about her reasons, but in my understanding, work at ICIQ did not meet her expectations. I consider this to be bad news for me. I will try to communicate better with prospective students to avoid these situations.
| |
| | |
| Of course, if at some point you feel so disappointed to consider quitting, please communicate your feelings and let us discuss a possible path forward.
| |
| | |
| And Happy New Year!
| |
| | |
| Feliu
| |
| | |
| | |
| '''*** February 25th, 2019 ***'''
| |
| | |
| As you may have already heard, I will be starting to work as associate editor for ACS Catalysis as of March 1st, 2019. If you did not know it yet, there is something wrong with your access to information ...
| |
| | |
| Some ideas on this respect:
| |
| | |
| (i) for ACS journals, the associate editors are the ones making the decisions on the submitted manuscripts. We decide if a job goes to referees, choose the referees and decide to finally reject (or accept) the article. So, definitely a position of power. Especially taking into account that ACS Catalysis has an impact factor near 12.0.
| |
| | |
| (ii) we are a team of 18 associate editors. I will focus on manuscripts on computational molecular catalysis. In principle, two or three per week. So I will mostly continue my work/procrastination at iciq.
| |
| | |
| (iii) it is an achievement for me. This is why I accepted. Although I am not happy with the work this will bring.
| |
| | |
| (iv) as for your day-to-day work, there will not be much change. I will have to show some restraint in submitting works to ACS Catalysis, which is bad for you. On the flip side, this gives a higher profile to the group, which should help with other journals.
| |
| | |
| | |
| '''*** March 4th, 2019 ***'''
| |
| | |
| Sara López has been awarded a FI fellowship (payed by Generalitat de Catalunya) for her PhD in our group. This is excellent news. Congratulations to Sara, and thanks to her for bringing her good cv to our group.
| |
| | |
| Now the red numbers of our research budget for 2019 are smaller, although they remain. And perspectives are much better for 2020 and beyond.
| |
| | |
| It is a good occasion to mention my view on different aspects of PhD fellowships. Some other day I will discuss post-doc, master and short stays. About the PhDs:
| |
| | |
| (i) personnel expenses (salaries) are one of the main weights in the group research budget. Anything we can get from outside frees money for other things.
| |
| | |
| (ii) the gain for the group is clear. For the candidate, it is more modest, but still. It looks good in the CV to have a fellowship from a competitive call, and can give access to some special money lines for short stays abroad.
| |
| | |
| (iii) which are the main external fellowships available where we apply?
| |
| | |
| - FPI ("formación de personal investigador", payed by the Spanish ministerio). Alloted to succesful research projects, once every three years. This is given to the project, and then the principal investigator (PI) can choose the researcher he/she wishes, as far as some minimal criteria are met. We have had continuously one of these since I arrived to ICIQ. Adiran is in the last year of one of those. Bruna is already in line for the new one, as she has been already aproved, but has not yest the salary.
| |
| | |
| - FPU ("formación de personal universitario", payed by the Spanish ministerio). Competitive call. One candidate per group can apply each year, and success is far from warranteed. Criteria depend on candidate cv (grades in BSc and master, essentially), supervisor cv, and "group cv". This "group cv" part is managed in a rather inconsistent way by the evaluation committee, and penalized us heavily last year. Raúl is applying for one of this in 2019.
| |
| | |
| - FI ("formació d'investigadors", payed by the Catalan government). Competitive call. One candidate per group can apply each year, and success is far from warranteed. The main criterion is the candidate cv (grades in BSc and master, essentially). But competition is intra-ICIQ. That is, Generalitat decides how many they give to ICIQ (usually one or two), and then the best candidates received the fellowship. This is the one Sara has just got. We were a little anxious because she was number 2 in the ICIQ list, so in the risk zone.
| |
| | |
| - Severo Ochoa whatever. These were special fellowships for centers with the Severo Ochoa label. ICIQ has this label for some time but lost it last year. These were less competitive, but we cannot apply for them any more. Ángel has one of this.
| |
|
| |
| - other competitive calls. There are calls from "La Caixa" and other institution. Usually very competitive in terms of required grades for the candidates. If you find some call where you want to apply, please inform me and let us discuss the options.
| |
| | |
| - another funding option are "ICIQ fellowships". These count against the group budget. And the amount of money is limited. Most people come to ICIQ with these fellowships. If I can move them to other fellowships, then we have free money to hire somebody else. Let me add that my policy is to fund the full PhD of anybody that starts working on it in the group. So far we have managed to do it.
| |
| | |
| | |
| '''*** June 17th, 2019 ***'''
| |
| | |
| Some new informations.
| |
| | |
| 1. Fellowships.
| |
| | |
| Raúl Pérez has been awarded a FPU fellowship from the Spanish Ministerio. Congratulations to him. And thanks for bringing his very good CV to our group.
| |
| | |
| Together with the FI fellowship for Sara and the FPI fellowship to Bruna, this means that the budget for 2020 becomes quite optimistic, and I may be able to hire a new post-doc. Unfortunately, this is not enough to complement the 2019 salaries for those leaving this year.
| |
| | |
| 2. Conferences.
| |
| | |
| As you know, you are encouraged to propose conferences to attend to improve your formation, improve CV, meet people ...
| |
| | |
| And there are other cases when I ask you to attend conferences for political reasons. In this sense, there are two which I think you should consider.
| |
| | |
| a) Reunió anual de la xarxa de química quàntica. Not yet officially announced. But the meeting of the Catalan computational chemists. This will be on July 18th in Barcelona. All of use should attend and present posters that you may have available. In principle, because I am the same day in another event at Valladolid. But you should attend if your are available. Please write it down in your calendars
| |
| | |
| b) Faraday Discussion. September 2-4, 2019. Data indicated in our web page. This is in an interesting event, as it touches the topics in mechanisms in organometallic chemistry where many of us work. Shaofei and I will be attending another conference in Stockholm that same week, but some of you should attend. Maybe one, maybe two, let's discuss. Deadline for posters is June 24th.
| |
| | |
| | |
| '''*** July 3rd, 2019 ***'''
| |
| | |
| Some different topics:
| |
| | |
| - A couple of weeks ago (June 17th to June 19th) took place the evaluation of ICIQ research groups. Every five years, the Scientific Advisory Board (see members in http://www.iciq.org/about-us/organisational-chart/scientific-advisory-board/) evaluates the performance of each research group in the last period. This is sharply different from the standard practice in the Spanish University, where professors are never evaluated, and it is one of the differentiating characteristics of ICIQ (and of other Generalitat-sponsored institutes).
| |
| | |
| The good news is that the evaluation for our group was very positive. I congratulate you (and the students that passed before you) because you are the ones doing the work. In practice, this means that there are no threats whatsoever of the group being closed down in the short or midterm future. The not so good news is that this will have no direct impact in the short term in our ICIQ-based funding. Such is life.
| |
| | |
| - Some times you ask me about general bibliography on how to do calculations in homogeneous catalysis. I want to bring to your attention a paper currently asap in ACS Catalysis (https://doi.org/10.1021/acscatal.9b01537) by some prestigious authors in the field (plus myself). Not everything written there has to be taken as dogma, but it summarizes the view (in July 2019) by the authors. My one-sentence summary is that method choices go beyond the choce of the functional to calculate the potential energy.
| |
| | |
| - A minor topic raised by one you is when to use carbon copy (cc) to me when sending e-mails outside. There are no fixed rules but my opinion is that you should put your supervisor in copy when doing some activity as graduate student, typical example being when you apply for a short stay abroad. And you should not put your supervisor in copy when it is a non-graduate student activity, typical example being when you apply for a post-doc. A related issue is the submission of abstracts to congresses, schools, etc ... My opinion is that it is not necessary to put in copy persons who are co-authors of the communication. It is assumed that all co-authors agree with the submission. Regardless, as I said above, there are no fixed rules. If you can think of more questions of this type I will think about putting a section of etiquette in this wiki.
| |
| | |
| '''*** October 22nd, 2019 ***'''
| |
| Some brief news:
| |
| | |
| - our new twitter account: @MaserasGroup
| |
| (kindly managed by @LMoranglez) (with support from other group members and memberesses)
| |
| | |
| - congratulations to Adiran for the thesis defense yesterday October 21st. Next one, Shaofei on November 18th. Also on tap, Ángel in February 2020. Happy for them completing the PhD. Sad for them leaving the group.
| |
| | |
| - newcomers: Cong Chen as a master student, Yaqiong Zhang (until Nov 30th) as visiting PhD student, Francesc Penas (until January 2020) as visiting undergraduate student.
| |
| | |
| - my personal schedule: trip to China (Wenzhou and Henan) from October 23rd to November 3rd.
| |