Today I just returned from Barcelona, Spain, where I had the pleasure of serving as thesis opponent for Niccolò Bancone at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His thesis investigated HCN reactivity at forsterite surfaces using computational chemistry. The topic is very close to my own PhD research, so it was a great opportunity to take on the role of thesis opponent for the first time.
Niccolò delivered an great presentation, and I genuinly had fun with the scientific discussion that followed. One clear lesson for next time is that while the actual defence day is a delight, the preparation should be done in a more structured and organized way by me next time, mainly to keep my own stress levels under control in the days prior.
In other good news, Linus, who started his PhD with us in January after completing his undergraduate theses and working in the group as a research assistant, has now published his first first-author paper. The work focuses on developing descriptors suited for property prediction of atmospheric compounds. We show that by using this new and more appropriate descriptor, prediction accuracy improves across a range of molecular properties.
