Caminati visit

Professor Walther Caminati (Università di Bologna) visited our group for two weeks in January 2018. Prof. Caminati is a leading figure in the investigation of hydrogen bonding using microwave spectroscopy. A recent report in Angewandte Chemie examined why some dimers of carboxylic acids and alcohols were unobservable in the gas phase. Read “The borderline between reactivity and prereactivity or binary mixtures of gaseous carboxylic acids and alcohols“.

In the picture below Prof. Caminati (center), Marcos Juanes y Rizalina T. Saragi.

Kisiel visit

Prof. Dr. Zbigniew Kisiel, a leading figure in rotational spectroscopy and researcher of the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, visited the UVa in May, 8-19, 2017. Prof. Kisiel was invited by the UVa Doctoral School to give the course “Analysis of broadband rotational spectra” which was attended by several Ph.D. students, Postdocs and interested staff of the Department. Prof. Kisiel mantains the useful web site “Programs for Rotational Spectroscopy“.

A picture of Prof. Kisiel in our lab is shown below.

China visit

A new microwave Spectroscopy group has been created at the University of Chongqing by two chinese researchers at the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engeering, Qian Gou and Gang Feng. Alberto Lesarri and Jens-Uwe Grabow were invited to visit the lab  in the wonderful Huxi campus in Chongqing last August for the first operations of the new spectrometer. The University of Chongqing was founded in 1929 and comprises 4 campus. Alberto gave a talk reviewing the applications of rotational Spectroscopy to structural Chemistry (August 5th) and a seminar on spectroscopic software tools (August 8th). Excellent hospitality in Chongqing and great future for Spectroscopy in China.

Above, Qian and Alberto at the end of his talk. Below, a view of the Huxi Campus of the University of Chongqing.

Jose A. Fernandez talk

Our research partner José Andrés Fernández gave an inspiring talk to Chemistry degree UVa students on non-covalent forces last March 18, 2016. The title of the talk was “Non-Covalent Interactions: How to Sink a Ship with a Piece of Ice“. José Andrés runs the laser spectroscopy and mass spectrometry lab at the University of the Basque country in Bilbao (UPV-EHU) and at the same time leads a team on MALDI imaging. Our collaboration in high resolution spectroscopy now spans more than 10 years and three national projects, bringing together rotational and double-resonance electronic and vibrational laser spectroscopies.