Every year, the Feringa and the Lerch group pack their bags and heads out for our annual Molecular Nanotour Symposium or “Work Week” -and this year was particularly special as we combined it with the 10th anniversary of Ben Feringa’s Nobel Prize! 🏆✨
We started bright and early in beautiful Groningen and travelled to Maastricht, where we visited the Brightlands Chemelot Campus. We enjoyed fascinating talks from a range of companies, from exciting start-ups to established scale-ups, and even got a glimpse “behind the scenes” during a laboratory tour. It was a great opportunity to learn more about the journey from scientific ideas to real-world applications. 🧪🚀 In the evening we enjoyed our bonte avond (Shoutout here to Lynn Thorns, Petko Stoychev Dr. Magdalena Kleybolte and Adriana Vasi)

The next day, we travelled on to the beautiful city of Strasbourg, where we celebrated Ben’s Nobel Prize anniversary with a delicious and beautiful cake from PATISSERIE CHRISTIAN. 🎂

Our visit concluded with a fantastic symposium together with Nicolas Giuseppone, bringing together the science and people from Groningen and Strasbourg. It was inspiring to hear about the exciting research being carried out at both institutions and to exchange ideas across groups.
We had an absolute blast! 🤩

A huge thank you to everyone who helped organise and make this so special. From the inspiring science to the great conversations, beautiful places, and, of course, the cake - it was a week to remember! 💙

In particular we want to thank the this years organizers: Tieze van den Elsen, Emil Hodzic, Phoebe Lowy and Patricia Izquierdo-García and last but not least our sponsors: Evonik, Chemspeed, Big Chemistry, Ridderprint, PolyVation, Carl Roth, Sysmex and Laser 2000 that made this trip possible! We are looking forward to the next year!