100 young chemists of the Royal Chemical Society of Belgium gathered at the UNamur, a record participation!

On March 6, the UNamur hosted the 13th edition of the “One-day meeting of the young chemists of the Royal Chemical Society of Belgium (SRC)”. This event was organized by the young chemists division of the SRC and with the precious help of PhD students Myriam Neumann, Kalina Mambourg and Elise Pierson who volunteered as local organizers. NISM and NARILIS institutes also contributed to this event by offering financial support.

More than 100 young chemists, from the five French-speaking universities (UCLouvain, ULiège, ULB, UMons and UNamur) met together to discuss their current research and exchange ideas and experience, both in the fields of “Material Chemistry” and “Life Sciences”. The meeting was also punctuated by the intervention of scientists from the private sector such as Dr. Vincent Bodart from INNOVYN. Dr. Laurence Theunis, recruiter and JobCoach of PhD profiles at Adoc Talent Management, provided useful information on PhD career opportunities. At the end of the day, she facilitated a panel discussion with several invited scientists: Dr. Bastien Bartélémy (Senior Researcher/Project Leader at AGC Glass Europe), Dr. Tarek Barakat (spin-off project - VOCALISE) and Dr. Sébastien Penninckx (Lecturer at UNamur). It was thus a day rich in learning but also networking opportunities!
The Jean-Claude Braekman prize (500€) was awarded to Sébastien Hoyas (UMons) for his talk entitled “How molecular modeling can help understanding the enantioselective properties of peptoids?”. Jean-Claude Braekman is Professor Emeritus from the ULB and former Secretary of the SRC from which he retired in 2018 after 17 years of service. The contest, created to honor his invaluable contribution to the SRC, rewards every year a PhD student who carried out a stay in a foreign laboratory in the framework of a scientific collaboration. Sébastien Hoyas joint the team of Prof. Luca Muccioli at the University of Bologna for 4 months in 2019.
Moreover, the Best Poster prize was awarded to Alexandra Yeromina (UNamur) for her poster presentation “Supported organic semiconductors for photoinduced debromination reaction”. Martin Gillard (UCLouvain) received the Best oral presentation prize for his talk entitled “Flexible RuII Schiff base complexes: Selective G-quadruplex DNA binding and photo-induced cancer cell death”.