Friday 15 February 2008

What we need more of is (being on the cover of) Science



For my PhD, I'm looking at chemical processes which happen when an electron is put into (or perhaps, taken out of) a system. As it happens my supervisor and his collaborators were finishing up a paper on this when I started work, and it just got published in Science. They even got the cover picture, up top. We're all really pleased about this: it's a neat bit of research on a familiar molecule, coming at it from both the experimental and theoretical sides, and having it published in a high-profile journal should lead to some interesting discussions. (If I'd started my PhD a couple of months earlier, I'd probably be a coauthor on this paper, which would've been great for my first year report. On the other hand, it's good to have an established bit of research to work outwards from.)

In a sense, all chemistry is about electrons - they're the enigmatic little particles whose interactions stick atoms together, to create molecules. That'll be the subject of my long post tomorrow. On Sunday, I'll also write a little about this paper, and the sort of stuff I'm going to be working on for the next few years.

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