The first time I heard the expression "low hanging fruit" in science, I got excited. Simple projects that seem to be straightforward – seemingly untouched by other scientists. Projects you could pluck...

Impact factor. The power of this term is unparalleled in academia. The word “impact” by itself is already so profoundly heavy. And second in line to it, would be tenure. I put it in second place, bec...

The speed with which US democracy is being dismantled is dizzying, but if we organise resistance now we can stop this, says Julia Steinberger of the University of Lausanne

I was recently at a conference – the friends-and-family kind. International, sure, but mostly populated by academically 'related' researchers. A chance to get all together, talk about new projects, sh...

At times, critique could be mistaken as criticism, even though it’s not meant to be. Still, even critique is difficult to deal with.  With time, I learned to ask “What is the intention behind this co...

We are very happy to announce that Samuel Van Gele, a doctoral researcher within the CRC1333, has been recognized as one of the world’s 30 most promising young scientists at the Inflection Award, for ...

Publishing Open Access (OA) has always been something important to me. It stems from my utopian belief that science should be for everyone and that the funders (taxpayers) should have access to it. Mo...

Getting more out of energy materials: Researchers at e-conversion have recently taken a significant step toward this goal. The research team, led by Prof. Bettina Lotsch, Professor at the Max Planck I...

Micrometre-thick oriented 2D covalent organic framework (COF) films are prepared via kinetically trapped 3D covalent adaptable network (CAN) intermediates. Imine-linked CANs are formed through solutio...

X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) data of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) seem to be simple and apparently do not contain a lot of structural information, as these patterns usually do not show more t...