CrystEngComm Blog

Len MacGillivray tells CrystEngCommunity about his secret to running a good research group and has some good advice for young scientists

05 March 2010

Len MacGillivray is an associate professor at the University of Iowa, USA and his research is focussed on template-controlled solid-state synthesis and supramolecular chemistry. Len is also a member of the CrystEngComm editorial board.

Why did you become a scientist?

Ever since I can remember, I have always been excited to read something new as it relates to science – whether chemistry, biology, or engineering related. Growing up, my parents had keen interests in nature and biology. I was also surrounded by music. Together, I think one develops a sense of wanting to explore.

What projects are you working on at the moment?

We are currently working on the crystal engineering of solid-state reactivity, organic semiconductors, and pharmaceutical materials.

What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in your field?

An understanding of how supramolecular chemistry and solid-state chemistry contribute to the origins of life.

How do you think crystal engineering will develop in the next five years?

My sense is that an important development will be an acceleration of new knowledge that results from combining the speed with which data can now be obtained from X-ray experiments with results from computational analyses. In as much that CCD X-ray diffractometers have changed the rate at which we process X-ray data, combining the speed of X-ray data acquisition with the rate at which crystal structure prediction is growing should lead to significant advancements.

What is the most rewarding aspect of your work?

Developing an idea that is able to sit on its own – whether achieved through finishing a paragraph in a manuscript or listening to a student convey his or her research for the first time.

What is the secret to a successful research group?

Trying to understand where everything fits and trying to suggest the right things at the right time.

What advice would you give to a young scientist?

Read the literature and start early. There are many opportunities to develop new ideas and learn how to convey your ideas.

What achievement are you most proud of?

Each student that graduates from my research group – and having each student be able to freely move on to the next stage of their life.

What would you do if you weren’t a scientist?

It is difficult for me to not imagine doing what I do.  It would certainly be exciting and rewarding to be a professional musician.

What is your favourite place to be?

In the company of family and friends.

Related Links

Len MacGillivray’s homepage at the University of Iowa in the US

Reactions in molecular solids and host-guest systems themed issue dedicated to Fumio Toda

Isostructural coordination polymers: epitaxis vs. solid solution
Matteo Lusi, Jerry L. Atwood, Leonard R. MacGillivray and Leonard J. Barbour
CrystEngComm, 2011, 13, 4311-4313

General application of mechanochemistry to templated solid-state reactivity: rapid and solvent-free access to crystalline supermolecules
Manza B. J. Atkinson, Dejan-Kreimir Buar, Anatoliy N. Sokolov, Tomislav Frii, Chanceity N. Robinson, Mahmood Y. Bilal, Naif G. Sinada, Asher Chevannes and Leonard R. MacGillivray, Chem. Commun., 2008, 5713

Find out more about Jane Li, R&D pharmaceutical crystal engineer and member of the CrystEngComm Editorial Board

27 January 2010

Jane Li is a distinguished scientist at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals. She works on crystalline pharmaceutical materials and she is also a member of the CrystEngComm Editorial Board.

Why did you to become a scientist?

When I was in school, scientific subjects came naturally to me. I am curious about how things work and develop, and interested in discovery and improvement.

What projects are you working on at the moment?

I have been working on crystalline pharmaceutical materials for over 15 years; pharmaceutical crystals are more complex and challenging because of their applications and limitations. In the last year, my research interests have expanded into amorphous dispersion and material characterization in terms of formulation development.

What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in your field?

Pharmaceutical development will continue to explore new technologies in drug delivery. In view of increasing number of large molecules entering pharmaceutical R&D, the next breakthrough will be innovative technologies in cost-effective delivery of proteins and other biomolecules.

How do you think crystal engineering will develop in the next five years?

I am pretty confident that crystal engineering will allow the discovery of new materials tailored to target specific applications in pharmaceutical and biotechnology fields.

What would you do if you weren’t a scientist?

I would like to be a designer.

What is the most rewarding aspect of your work?

I would say that it is the constant technical challenges in discovering and understanding new crystalline and/or amorphous materials and their applications for developing new drugs. Every drug molecule has its own characteristics and so has its crystalline salts and cocrystals. As a result, I am working with something new all the time and I really appreciate when the solutions I came up help to solve a problem and to advance drug candidates into the next stage.

What is the secret to a successful research group?

I think that the most important thing is to stimulate the interest and passion of each group member and create an environment of freedom and tolerance, but this is not so easy to achieve.

What achievement are you most proud of?

My patent in discovery and characterization of new crystal forms of Azithromycin which have created opportunities to challenge other patents. Also, my work on cocrystals in using 15N NMR to study the proton transfer behavior between base and acid.

What advice would you give to a young scientist?

A solid understanding of fundamental principles, keen observation and creative thinking are critical to succeed.

Can you tell us a little known fact about yourself?

I love nature and travel, appreciate good food, and wish I had had a chance to learn to play an instrument when I was young growing up in China.

Related links:

Mapping out the synthetic landscape for re-crystallization, co-crystallization and salt formation
Christer B. Aakeröy, Arbin Rajbanshi, Z. Jane Li and John Desper
CrystEngComm, 2010, 12, 4231-4239

http://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com/

Song Gao talks to CrystEngCommunity about the future for magnetism and his passion for the history of science

11 January 2010

Song Gao is the CrystEngComm Regional Associate Editor for China and the Cheung Kong Professor of Inorganic Chemistry, Molecular Magnetism at Peking University. He is also a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interests focus on magnetic coordination polymers, single molecule magnets, multi-functional molecular materials and porous, organic-inorganic hybrid molecular solids.

Why did you to become a scientist?

I was interested in both physics and chemistry in high school. The interesting thing was that for the college entrance examinations, my score in chemistry was one point higher than that in physics, so I applied to the chemistry department. In fact, what attracts me most is not the chemistry itself, but the overlapping field of chemistry and physics.

What projects are you working on at the moment?

I am working in the field of molecular magnetism; it is an interdisciplinary subject, concerning synthetic chemistry and solid state physics of molecular solids. My research projects are currently focused on magnetic ordered coordination polymers, molecular nanomagnets, molecular and crystal engineering, and multifunctional molecular materials.

What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in your field?

It is difficult to predict the future. In the last two decades, the field of molecular magnetism has seen tremendous development, for example magnetic ordering in organic or organic-metal molecular solids, single-molecule/single-chain magnets and multifunctional molecular materials. The next big breakthrough might be understanding and manipulating single molecule magnetic and transportation behaviors for molecular spintronics.

How do you think crystal engineering will develop in the next five years?

From view point of molecular magnetism, rational design and control of crystalline molecular solids with expected magnetic properties is still a challenge, although we already know a lot about the relationship between structure and magnetism. Some new fields are emerging, such as dynamic structure and functional properties of molecular crystals and molecular crystal engineering on surfaces, interfaces or in confined spaces.

What would you do if you weren’t a scientist?

Probably, a teacher or an editor, my parents were all teachers.

What is the most rewarding aspect of your work?

I’m happy that I’ve been doing what I love to do all these years. Also as a professor at a university, I am fortunate to work with many bright young people. Anyway, doing research itself is a pleasant journey.

What is the secret to a successful research group?

I think that the most important thing is to stimulate the interest and passion of each group member and create an environment of freedom and tolerance, but this is not so easy to achieve.

What achievement are you most proud of?

So far, my co-workers and I have made some achievements in our research area, such as creating some homospin single-chain magnets, discovering field-dependent magnetic relaxation in some magnetic isolated systems and constructing some new molecular magnets based on spin canting strategy. However, I think I have not experienced the so-called ‘extreme excitement’ with these achievements. I’m not a perfectionist, but I have set high goals for myself, especially in terms of originality.

What advice would you give to a young scientist?

Thinking and doing, doing and thinking.

Can you tell us a little known fact about yourself?

I love to read, especially books on the history of science. When I was still a college student, I used to be a member of the Science & Philosophy Club. I’m interested in the history of the early 20th century, which is an exciting period of time for science development. Reading about history of that era sustains my passion for science.

Related Links

Song Gao’s homepage at Peking University in China

M2(N3)4(hmt)(H2O) (M = Co2+ and Ni2+, hmt = hexamethylenetetramine): mixed azide-hmt bridged 3D metal frameworks with long-range magnetic ordering
Ru-Yin Li, Zhe-Ming Wang and Song Gao, CrystEngComm, 2009, 11, 2096

Transition metal coordination frameworks with bridges of 1,2-bis(4-pyridyl)ethane-N,N-dioxide incorporating anions of different size
Hao-Ling Sun, Zhe-Ming Wang, Song Gao and Stuart R. Batten, CrystEngComm, 2008, 10, 1796

Concepció Rovira talks to CrystEngCommunity about using crystalline conductors in medicine

20 October 2009

Concepció Rovira is a professor at the Institute Ciencia de Materiales de Barcelona (ICMAB), Spain.  Her research involves the design and synthesis of molecular and supramolecular organic materials. She is a member of the CrystEngComm  Editorial Board and was one of the guest editors of a recent themed issue in the journal on crystal enginnering in molecular magnetism.

Why did you become a scientist?

When I was at school, I liked the more scientific topics because it was easier for me to rationalize concepts than to memorise facts. To develop something from a scientific basis and understand why things happen greatly interested me from an early age.

What projects are you working on at the moment?

I am working on developing molecular materials from the basic point of view, as well as for application purposes. One particular project deals with the design and synthesis of new molecules for organic field effect transistors and the understanding of the relationship between crystal structure and device performances. For application in medical and biological fields, I am working on the development of very sensitive strain sensors based on organic crystalline conductors processed as bilayer films using polymers. Other projects deal with functionalisation of different surfaces with electroactive molecules either by chemisorption or physisorbtion and the study of the resulting 2D molecular organizations as well as the switching behaviour and the conductance through the molecules.

What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in your field?

A breakthrough is always something that happens suddenly and it is not easy to predict. The understanding of crystal growth either in bulk crystals or two-dimensional surfaces can lead to the control of molecular arrangements. If we are able to control all minor details of the self-assembling of molecules, the properties of solids and surfaces will be tuned as desired and this will really be a big breakthrough.

How do you think crystal engineering will develop in the next five years?

I think that progress in the development of crystal packing prediction will help in the control of the molecular self-assembling.  Both, computation and inspiration from biological systems will be key points for this development. Bulk materials and functional surfaces with electronic magnetic and optical properties will be then addressed based in the self-assembling control.

What is the most rewarding aspect of your work?

One rewarding aspect is to work in projects that you are designing and shaping and executing to their end and another aspect is to work with young people who always have new ideas and enthusiasm to develop the projects. It is also rewarding to meet colleagues from all over the world and see that science is unifying all of us.

What is the secret to a successful research group?

To share the knowledge and take into account all the ideas of doctors and students. It is very important to maintain enthusiasm in the projects and let people to develop their own ideas.

What advice would you give to a young scientist?

To have an open mind in order to develop work beyond their own field. It is also important to take risks in the projects and not only follow those ideas that seem to have almost 100 % of success. A scientist needs also to be patient; many times the best results appear after a dark tunnel.

What achievement are you most proud of?

Probably our work on new molecular conductors that was started in the more classical charge transfer salts and afterwards developed for Field Effect Transistors and new applications as sensors and functional surfaces.

What would you do if you weren’t a scientist?

I might have become a chef. I love to cook any kind of food and also enjoy the pleasure of eating with family and friends and the talk around a table.

What is your favourite place to be?

I like to be close to nature, either mountains or by the seaside. To be with my family is a priority.

Related Links

Concepció Rovira’s homepage Institute of Ciencia de Materiales de Barcelona, Spain

Themed issue on Crystal engineering in molecular magnetism Issue 10, 2009
17 September 2009

The four polymorphic modifications of the semiconductor dibenzo-tetrathiafulvalene
Aldo Brillante, Ivano Bilotti, Raffaele Guido Della Valle, Elisabetta Venuti, Silvia Milita, Chiara Dionigi, Francesco Borgatti, Adina Nicoleta Lazar, Fabio Biscarini, Marta Mas-Torrent, Neil S. Oxtoby, Nuria Crivillers, Jaume Veciana, Concepció Rovira, Michael Leufgen, Georg Schmidt and Laurens W. Molenkamp, CrystEngComm, 2008, 10, 1899

The newest member of the CrystEngComm Editorial Board talks to CrystEngCommunity about Crystal Explorer and kangaroos

18 September 2009

Mark Spackman is a professor at the University of Western Australia and is also involved in many crystallographic associations.
His research focuses on bridging the gap between theoretical and experimental determinations of molecular properties and the use of tools and methods from computational chemistry to inform aspects of modern crystallography, especially crystal packing.

1) Why did you to become a scientist?
I guess I have a curious mind, wanting to know about all manner of things and understand how they work and fit together. As a child I remember playing with chemicals, producing hydrogen to propel rockets, burning sulphur, and melting lead. This is so obviously dangerous now, but I was fortunate enough to grow up in a world where children were given the freedom to explore their surroundings in all sorts of ways that now seem impossible. I remember long bike rides with friends in the New Zealand countryside, and getting to know the spectacular geography, the native flora and the wonderful birds. And like many chemists I know, I was also turned on to chemistry by an enthusiastic high school teacher who included all manner of chemical demonstrations in his classes. Those days school students were allowed to undertake experiments that are mostly off limits now. Curiously, I ended up pursuing mostly theoretical and computational research, probably because I discovered that others were much better at experiments than I was, and also because I wanted a deeper understanding than experiments alone could provide.

2) What projects are you working on at the moment?
We are working on the further development of Hirshfeld surface and related tools with our software CrystalExplorer, and experimental charge density studies of some of the fundamental host-guest systems like hydroquinone clathrates and crown ether complexes. We have so many more ideas for CrystalExplorer, for example the characterization of voids in molecular crystals, mapping of a variety of other interesting properties on molecular surfaces, and linking these visual and qualitative tools to the computation of intermolecular interaction energies. For the host-guest systems I’m interested in finding out whether experimental charge density analysis is capable of yielding accurate information on properties of guest molecules, such as dipole moments, and their relationship to the crystal field they experience in different hosts.

3) What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in your field?
What field do I consider myself to be in? I used to be very much involved in charge density research, in particular the detailed analysis and modelling of X-ray diffraction data, but I’ve also worked a great deal on the critical comparison between theory and experiment for a host of electrical properties of molecules. The common thread in all of this has been a focus on molecules, their properties, and their relationship to the structure and properties of molecular crystals, so in a sense it was natural for this to lead to crystal engineering. I’m not a great believer in big breakthroughs, but I do think that we are beginning to see less of a focus on descriptions of crystal structure, and more attempts to understand the key factors that determine why one (or several) structures are observed, and not a multitude of other possibilities.  In line with this is an increasing awareness that molecules in crystals are not static (molecular cemeteries) – and their motion and even disorder will often play an important role in determining not just which crystal structures form, but even their bulk properties.

4) How do you think crystal engineering will develop in the next five years?
I would like to see this deeper understanding of intermolecular interactions translated into an appreciation of the relationship between the properties of molecules, their crystal structure, and the properties of the bulk. We’ve recently explored this by looking into linear and nonlinear optical properties of molecular crystals, and their relationship with the molecular polarizabilities and hyperpolarizabilities, and in particular the changes to those properties brought about by the crystalline electric field. For me this work highlighted the widely under-appreciated importance of the magnitude of electric field experienced by molecules in close proximity to one another. These fields can be three orders of magnitude greater than we can apply to crystals in the laboratory, and their consequences reach far beyond molecular crystals and crystal engineering, and into the fundamentals of molecular recognition and protein-ligand binding.

5) What is the most rewarding aspect of your work?

Discovering new things and working with enthusiastic colleagues. I still get excited by new results from experiment or computations, especially results that tell us something we weren’t expecting. On a personal level, one of the most rewarding aspects of involvement and participation in an international scientific community, especially in crystallography, is that so many of the colleagues I’ve met and worked with over the years have become great personal friends.

6) What is the secret to a successful research group?
I’ve never had a large research group, and at times have been working pretty much by myself. But developing and maintaining good relationships with colleagues, co-workers and students has always been important to me. Providing strong support and effective mentoring to students and young post-doctoral workers is absolutely essential.

7) What achievement are you most proud of?
I would have to say our work on Hirshfeld surfaces and the developments that have evolved from that very simple idea. I still find it astonishing that such a simple concept was not discovered before we stumbled on it in 1996, and I’m extremely pleased with the way it has grown from the germ of an idea to a freely available multi-platform software package that embodies this novel approach to crystal structure analysis. It is also extremely satisfying to see that other researchers find these tools useful in their own work. Of course this is far from my work alone – it has been a joint effort with many others, in particular Josh McKinnon and Dylan Jayatilaka, and I’m extremely fortunate to have been able to collaborate with these very talented people.

8 ) What advice would you give to a young scientist?
Don’t just follow what others are doing. Be inventive and original, and pursue a path less travelled. Make sure that you enjoy what you do! And I can’t think of any more important advice than to be persistent in pursuing your goals and try not to be discouraged by negative comments or temporary setbacks. This is especially applicable to research funding these days.

9) What would you do if you weren’t a scientist?
I think I would always be a scientist of some kind. Perhaps if things had been different I might have become a geologist, or even a botanist.

10) Can you tell us a little known fact about yourself?
As a graduate student I played a lot of volleyball, and this continued while a postdoc in America, where I played for Carnegie-Mellon as well as socially. Because I had a naturally high jump, and because I came from Australia, I earned the nickname of “kangaroo”.

Related Links

Mark Spackman’s homepage University of Western Australia

Visualisation and characterisation of voids in crystalline materials
Michael J. Turner, Joshua J. McKinnon, Dylan Jayatilaka and Mark A. Spackman
CrystEngComm, 2011, 13, 1804-1813

Revised electrostatics from invariom refinement of the 18-residue peptaibol antibiotic trichotoxin A50E
Birger Dittrich, Charles S. Bond, Roman Kalinowski, M. A. Spackman and Dylan Jayatilaka
CrystEngComm, 2010, 12, 2419-2423

Hiroshi Yamamoto talks to CrystEngCommunity

19 July 2009

Hiroshi Yamamoto is based at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), Discovery Research Institute, Condensed Molecular Materials Laboratory in Saitama, Japan. His research focuses on molecular arrangements of crystalline materials for use as electric conductors and superconductors.

1) Why did you to become a scientist?
My father was also a scientist and it was quite natural for me to become a scientist. I also found a joy of science as I learned more about it.

2) What projects are you working on at the moment?
I have two projects now.
The first project is a chemical one where I study conduction properties of organic crystals with supramolecular assemblies. I’m especially interested in constructing a supramolecular insulating sheath to separate conducting organic nanowires from each other in the crystal.
The second project is a physical one. I’m making FET (field effect transistor) devices with organic charge transfer salts. My final aim for this project is to realize a phase transition transistor with high switching ability and a superconducting FET.

3) What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in your field?
Here I restrict my fields to those related to the crystal engineering.
The first one that comes to my mind is a prediction of crystal structures by computation. I have discussed this possibility with my colleague and understood it is really a big challenge. But I think the impact of succeeding in a structure prediction is very high.
The second one is epitaxial growth of organic crystals. The importance of an interface between two crystals is now increasing quite rapidly in inorganic materials science. I’m quite sure that it will be a big breakthrough if you succeed in making an atomically flat interface between organic crystals.

4) How do you think crystal engineering will develop in the next five years?
Firstly, I think it’s quite important for crystal engineering to expand its power in controlling chemical and/or physical properties of the crystals. This point of view makes the crystal engineering a real ‘engineering’.
As a ‘tool’ for control of properties, desired structures should be constructed in the crystal. In the next five years, I think the simultaneous use of several kinds of intermolecular interaction will be developed in this field. To this end, relatively minor interactions like halogen bonds will be more and more important, as they can be complementary interactions to the major ones such as hydrogen bond and metal coordination.
This August, there will be a special session for halogen bond in the American Chemical Society meeting in Washington D.C. This session will be a nice occasion to discuss how halogen bond can be an effective intermolecular interaction in crystal engineering, although it is less known for many chemists for the moment.

5) What is the most rewarding aspect of your work?
I’m always excited when I see a new crystal structure. Every time it is beautiful enough to compensate for a lot of efforts to make it. It is also a great joy that I can discuss and share these beautiful entities with my colleagues and academic friends.

6) What is the secret to a successful research group?
Sharing a professional mind is an important basis, and after that, it is the most important thing to enjoy science.

7) What achievement are you most proud of?
I’m proud of being able to control conduction properties by constructing an insulating network. People tend to pay the highest attention to the conducting molecules in their development of conducting materials, but I found that the insulating moiety can play a big role when you consider an application use.

8 ) What advice would you give to a young scientist?
The darkest hour is just before the dawn.

9) What would you do if you weren’t a scientist?
Probably a teacher, because I like teaching.

10) What is your favourite place to be?
I like sea side places. It would be quite nice if there are a hammock and a refreshing sea breeze.

Related Links

Hiroshi Yamamoto’s homepage Condensed Molecular Materials Lab. RIKEN, Japan

01 July 2009

Pierangelo Metrangolo is an associate professor of fundamentals of chemistry for electronics at the Politecnico di Milano Technical University, Italy. His research focuses on the supramolecular chemistry of fluorinated derivatives, in particular halogen bonding and fluorous interactions, crystal engineering of porous networks, and liquid crystals.

1) Why did you want to become a scientist?

My father was a pharmacist and since the very first experiments we did together when I was a child I knew I wanted to study chemistry.

2) What projects are you working on at the moment?

At the moment I am working on the use of supramolecular interactions for controlling functional properties of materials like electro-optical phenomena or solid-state reactivity.

3) What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in your field?

One of the major challenges today is the integration of biomimetics in the nanodomain. There is still a lot to do for achieving control over the formation of 10-nm nanostructures thus filling the gap between the top-down and bottom-up approaches in nanotechnology.

4) How do you think crystal engineering will develop in the next five years?

We will see, I believe, an increase in structures exhibiting an adaptive behaviour in the presence of environmental constraints or external stimuli. The use of flexible building blocks will replace that of stiff building materials.

5) What is the most rewarding aspect of your work?

I think being a university professor is one of the most rewarding jobs I know. It still surprises me how happy I always am when new scientific results are obtained or a paper is accepted.

6) What is the secret to a successful research group?

Motivation and trust. If your younger collaborators are highly motivated in the work they do, trust your suggestions and do not get frustrated just after the first failure, the whole research group benefits from it.

7) What achievement are you the most proud of?

I am very proud of the work my friend and colleague Giuseppe Resnati and I have done together in recent years on halogen bonding. Though Odd Hassel highlighted the possibilities opened in crystal engineering by charge-transfer interactions involving halogens in his Nobel lecture in 1969, halogen bonding did not receive much attention afterwards. Our recent work has drawn the interest of the international scientific community to this interaction, which is now definitely considered a useful tool to control intermolecular recognition processes.

8 ) What advice would you give to a young scientist?

Always place your research results in the broader context of the literature. I think that a very good literature search is the key to a successful research project.

9) What would you do if you weren’t a scientist?

I might be more active in politics, which still is not excluded as a future option.

10) What is your favourite place to be?

Abroad in general. It is very nice that my job offers the opportunity to travel a lot and meet people of many different countries and cultures.

Related Links
Pierangelo Metrangolo’s homepage at the Politecnico di Milano Technical University, Italy

Anion coordination and anion-templated assembly under halogen bonding control
Pierangelo Metrangolo, Tullio Pilati, Giancarlo Terraneo, Serena Biella and Giuseppe Resnati, CrystEngComm, 2009, 11, 1187

Mutual induced coordination in halogen-bonded anionic assemblies with (6,3) cation-templated topologies
Pierangelo Metrangolo, Frank Meyer, Tullio Pilati, Giuseppe Resnati and Giancarlo Terraneo, Chem. Commun., 2008, 1635

Halogen bonding and other noncovalent interactions involving halogens: a terminology issue
Pierangelo Metrangolo, Tullio Pilati and Giuseppe Resnati, CrystEngComm, 2006, 8, 946

21 May 2009

Neil Champness is the Professor of Chemical Nanoscience at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is also the current chair of the CrystEngComm editorial board. His research covers all aspects of molecular organisation and supramolecular chemistry.

Why did you become a scientist?

I probably became a scientist because I was always better at sciences when I was at school. I have always believed that you should use your talents for the benefit of others and for me that meant becoming a scientist.

What projects are you working on at the moment?

There are always a large number of projects going on in my group and our research is becoming more diverse all the time! A couple of projects which we are really enjoying are studies of new metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)  that support optically active substituents and another project on generating random structures on surfaces which we do in collaboration with Peter Beton’s group here in Nottingham. It is fun for a supramolecular chemist to use designed intermolecular interactions to generate random structures – it is like using order to create disorder. The irony appeals to me!

What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in your field?

I think there are some very interesting things going on in translating our understanding of three-dimensional crystals to two-dimensional surface structures and vice versa. I think we are starting to learn a lot about how crystals begin to form and this could have an enormous impact on crystal engineering and on surface assembly in general.

How do you think crystal engineering will develop in the next five years?

I think there will be significant developments in the field of MOFs. Personally I feel that this is a field which is starting to mature and will lead to increasing commercialisation of these type of compounds for a variety of applications. In the wider crystal engineering field, I anticipate that people will get closer and closer to being able to predict structures ab initio. Structure prediction is a field that I think many researchers watch with fascination and there is some beautiful work going on.

What would you do if you weren’t a scientist?

I would be a politician. I have been quoted as saying this before and it is probably the comment which raises most surprise from other academics. I have strong political beliefs and my heroes tend to be politicians rather than scientists. Anyone who has visited me in Nottingham would know that I have a full-size campaign poster from Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign above my computer – I guess this will tell people something about me.

What is the most rewarding aspect of your work?

Working with the researchers in my group. There are few jobs where you get to interact with so many bright and enthusiastic people. I enjoying publishing but I also enjoy the sense of achievement that the researchers feel from their first few publications.

What is the secret to a successful research group?

The researchers, the PhD students and the postdocs. The reality is that it is the people in the lab who actually do things. Of course the group leader needs to nurture a sense of excitement about the research that is being done but ultimately it all comes down to the researchers.

What advice would you give to a young scientist?

Never lose hold of the big picture. It is very important to be ambitious – to try to solve important questions and not to get lost in the minutiae.

What achievement are you most proud of?

Probably the work we have done on surface self-assembly, using crystal engineering concepts to organise molecules on the nanoscale. I was recently told by a student that one of my papers was the first scientific paper they had ever read which somewhat surprised me. It is nice that our work is now covered in text books as well as it feels that our contribution is being passed on to undergraduate students.

What is your favourite place to be?

Naturally at home with my family. After that I guess it is a toss-up between being by the sea or watching my football club, Southampton. People who know anything about UK football will realise that watching Southampton is not normally too enjoyable for their fans!

Related links:

Neil Champness homepage

Hydrogen-bonding tectons for the construction of bimolecular framework materials
Jacqueline Hamblin, Stephen P. Argent, Alexander J. Blake, Claire Wilson and Neil R. Champness, CrystEngComm, 2008, 10, 1782 DOI: 10.1039/b811462e

Hydrogen storage in metal–organic frameworks
Xiang Lin, Junhua Jia, Peter Hubberstey, Martin Schröder and Neil R. Champness,
CrystEngComm, 2007, 9, 438 DOI: 10.1039/b706207a

24 February 2009

Christoph Janiak is professor of inorganic and analytical chemistry at the University of Freiburg, Germany. His research focuses on the construction of polynuclear complexes and coordination polymers, crystal engineering  and olefin polymerisation. He is a member of the Editorial Board of CrystEngComm.

Why did you to become a scientist?

My high school chemistry teacher got me hooked to chemistry. Ever since I got this subject in my 9th grade I knew I wanted to study chemistry.

What projects are you working on at the moment?

At the moment I am working on coordination polymers (nowadays more fashionably called MOFs), metal nanoparticles in ionic liquids, metal complexes and their supramolecular interactions and complexes for olefin polymerization and oligomerization.

What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in your field?

It is difficult to be a prophet, especially since we mostly tend to extrapolate from our present knowledge and therefore, it is difficult to imagine a really “unforeseeable” breakthrough. In chemistry at large I am waiting to see a “simple” system which can replicate itself (as an essential element of life).

How do you think crystal engineering will develop in the next five years?

I think we will see an increase in built-in complexity in molecular crystals for electrooptical phenomena or solid-state reactivity. I also think we will progress, with the help of computations, to predict and to quantitatively rationalize crystal packing, not just describe it.

What would you do if you weren’t a scientist?

I may have gone to law school.

What is the most rewarding aspect of your work?

To have, as a university professor, the freedom to decide what research I want to do and to work with young people.

What is the secret to a successful research group?

To give the young Master or Ph.D. students the freedom to follow their ideas – even if somewhat outside of your present research. That is how I recently started a project into the field of nanoscience.

What advice would you give to a young scientist?

To read, read, read in the journals so as to develop a broad perspective of chemistry and not to be too narrow in your research.

Can you tell us a little known fact about yourself?

I co-author textbooks in inorganic chemistry for B.Sc. and M.Sc. students and to keep in shape I jog and run a marathon once a year (that may be two facts!).