Our PhD student Katarzyna Mituła was nominated for the Polish Intelligent Development Award 2020 (Polska Nagroda Inteligentnego Rozwoju 2020) in the category: Scientist of the future for the realization of the Preludium project entitled: “New hybrid materials based on polysiloxanes modified with silsesquioxanes” Funded by National Science Centre. As part of this initiative, Kasia gave an interview “New Hybrid Materials” for Rzecz o Innowacjach. Continue reading
Our new paper in Materials as a result of joint research with prof. UAM dr hab. Patrycja Żak and her group. The paper concerns the synthesis of bifunctional cubic silsesquioxanes based on different but complementary reactions, i.e., cross-metathesis (CM) and silylative coupling (SC), applied in a one-pot manner, which has an attractive impact on the synthetic procedure, as it is economic in terms of the isolation of intermediate products. Continue reading
We are happy to announce that at the end of July, MSc Katarzyna Mituła received a prestigious Scholarship for PhD Students in the 8th edition of ETIUDA, funded by the National Science Centre. Her project’s proposal concerns the synthesis of new materials based on polysiloxanes and silsesquioxanes, entitled “Polisiloksany modyfikowane funkcjonalizowanymi silseskwioksanami- synteza oraz charakterystyka” (“Polysiloxanes modified with functionalized silsesquioxanes – synthesis and characterization“) was one of the 34 other projects that received funding (among all 188 proposals in the ST panel). CONGRATULATIONS 😊 Continue reading
We have our firsts graduated BSc and MSc Students – Marek and Filip defended their Theses on Monday and Tuesday (6 and 7 July) and Kasia on Wednesday (15th July). Due to the COVID-19, the defenses were conducted online via Ms Teams platform. Both BSc and MSc Thesis obtained very good grades. Nuria Miguel, as an Erasmus Student, was performing her BSc Thesis in the form of a project which was also rated high last week.
CONGRATULATIONS! Continue reading
The worldwide pandemic of COVID-19 trapped us at home since half of March. We stayed at home with the online paperwork, writing, and polishing the descriptions of experimental work for the supporting information and manuscripts of our future papers. This was also a time for the online didactics of seminars as well as defining the goals for the BSc thesis of Filip, Marek and Nuria, and the MSc thesis of Kasia. It hasn’t been easy for everyone.
However, after almost three months of lockdown, we are finally back to our Lab. Continue reading
We have just published the results of MSc Kasia Mitula PhD research concerning the synthesis of Tri(alkenyl)functional Open-Cage Silsesquioxanes.
It is a report on efficient synthetic route leading to trifunctionalized, open-cage silsesquioxanes with alkenyl groups of varying chain lengths from vinyl to dec-9-enyl and two types of inert groups (iBu, Ph) at the silsesquioxane core. Additionally, a thorough characterization of the obtained compounds was performed, also in terms of their thermal stability, melting and crystallization temperatures (TGA and DSC) to show the changes in the abovementioned parameters dependent on the type of reactive as well as inert groups at Si-O-Si core. Continue reading
In November 2019, dr Monika Rzonsowska and prof. UAM dr hab. Beata Dudziec visited prof. Hongzhi Liu research group in Jinan, People’s Republic of China. After lasting almost 24h journey, along with prof. UAM dr hab. Robert Przekop and MSc Dariusz Brząkalski, the four representatives of Adam Mickiewicz University and Centre for Advanced Technologies, reached their goal on the map of China. City Jinan is located ca. 350km in the south-east from Beijing (Pekin), on the Huang He River and it is the capital of the Shandong Subdistrict. In 2010 it had a “medium” population of 6.8 mln 🙂
In the beautiful scenery of Portuguese Venezia, in Aveiro, the 2nd International Conference on Nanomaterials Science and Mechanical Engineering took place. Three young scientists: mgr Julia Duszczak, mgr Katarzyna Mituła, and dr Monika Rzonsowska represented our Lab Team to report on the research results obtained thanks to financial support from National Science Centre: OPUS 14 – 2016/23/B/ST5/00201 and PRELUDIUM 14 – 2017/27/N/ST5/00175. The conference was preceded by the Workshop on Characterization and Analysis of Nanomaterials, where participants had the opportunity to learn about actual trends in the analysis of special materials and see analytical equipment at the University in Aveiro.
Like every year we celebrate within our Group Members the forthcoming Christmas Holidays. This year we met on 19th December in our Lab to have a nice talk and eat cuisine delights made by ourselves. Only Kasia and Julia weren’t there as they were on their internship in Namur (Belgium). Filip and Marek are our Bachelor Students, Kasia is doing her Master Thesis and Natalia has joined our team just recently, she is at the 2nd year of studies.
Thanks to The National Centre for Research and Development projects (POWR.03.02.00-00-I023/17 and POWR.03.02.00-00-I026/16) two of our PhD students – Katarzyna Mituła and Julia Duszczak had an opportunity to participate in a scientific internship (1.11.2019-31.01.2020) under the supervision of Prof. Carmela Aprile and PhD Andrea Santiago Portillo at the University of Namur (Faculty of Chemistry and Department of Laboratory of Applied Materials Chemistry (CMA)). During these three months, Katarzyna and Julia explored the application of Heck coupling and the Sonogashira process that are ubiquitous with organosilicon frameworks. These reactions were tested in the modification of difunctionalized double-decker silsesquioxanes synthesized in our group with terpyridine derivatives.