Blog by the boss
BLOG FOR MASERAS GROUP
*** 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:
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.