Sam Mahler Summer Research 2023

Tomorrow will mark one week since I arrived here in Fribourg. It's been a very long (but good!) week. Adjusting to a new city in a new country is a lot, but the research group has been very welcoming. I'm working in the lab with a swiss PhD student named Jocelyn. We get along well, and I'm really enjoying learning about his research. Jocelyn latest project is the investigation of bimetallic salen complexes and their properties. The whole Fromm group is interested in the anti-microbial/bacterial properties of different compounds. This week I synthesized the starting salen ligand and created zinc, copper, and silver coordination compounds with it. Here are some pictures and additional details: This is the structure of the salen ligand. Its just a boring yellow powder so I didn't include a picture of it, I also may have forgotten to take a picture of it. The metals are added first to the space between the two nitrogens (N) and alcohols (OH). This is the preferred site for ...

      I arrived yesterday in Fribourg Switzerland on May 20th. It was a good flight although I wasn't able to sleep. I got to see the northern lights while over the north Atlantic (sorry for the picture quality!). The professor I'll be working with. Dr. Katharina Fromm showed me around the city, it's a very nice city. Some of the old medieveal wall is still in place around the city. I'll make sure to explore more in the future (and provide additional pictures of course.) This will be a short entry, as I'm still quite tired from traveling, but I look forward to more posts in the future!       The pictures in order are:      1) A view of the city, 2) The view from my room, 3) The northern lights and a plane wing