Close to 4500 chemists and chemical engineers responded to the first issue of the European employment survey. The participating EuCheMS member societies covered more than 90 percent of the EuCheMS membership. The questionnaire was offered in 24 European languages. Four of them have not been used: interestingly, a number of colleagues preferred to respond in English instead of their native language. 86 percent of all responders work in their native country. 60 percent of all responders were female.

All stored responses cover a data matrix of the size of ca. 4500 × 230. Even though not all responders completed all questions, the detailed evaluation of the submitted information is a great challenge and will require some time. However, several sections of the questionnaire could be analyzed in depth in initial work. Here we publish the first preliminary results of the European employment survey.

The median age of the responders is around 30 years. The youngest responders are aged 20. The most experienced responder is a lady from Slovenia aged 87 years. Pensioners submitted two percent of all responses, students five percent. Only three percent of all responders were not employed or seeking employment. The overwhelming contribution (90 percent of all responses) came from employed colleagues who are either full-time or part-time employed.

Let's now take a closer look at the responses from employed colleagues and investigate their employment status: 85 percent have a permanent contract, only 15 percent a temporary contract. Of those with a permanent contract, 96 percent work full-time and 4 percent part-time. Of those with a temporary contract, 80 percent work full-time and 20 percent part-time.

The gender distribution of those with a permanent contract is in accord with conventional expectations: 65 percent of the employees working full-time are males, 67 percent of the employees working part-time are female. In case of temporary contracts, females and males participate equally both for full-time and for part-time contracts.

The survey was commissioned by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and executed by the European Chemistry Thematic Network Association (ECTN). It was supported by EuCheMS, the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic) and the European Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Education Network (EC2E2N).

Reiner Salzer, reiner.salzer@tu-dresden.de

EuCheMS and the JRC discussed joint activities

David Cole-Hamilton, EuCheMS Vice-President and President-Elect, Nineta Majcen, EuCheMS Secretary General, and Tomaso Munari, EuCheMS expert for chemicals, visited the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission at its premises in Ispra, Italy, on 26 May 2014. The meeting was organised to present the respective work programmes and activities, exchange views, identify areas of common interest and pave the way for cooperation with respect to the EU 2020 targets on competitiveness, innovation, health, safety and environment. The meeting was opened by Krzysztof Maruszewski, Director of the Institute for Health and Consumer Protection, followed by a presentation of his institute. Likewise, Maria Betti, Director of the Institute for Environment and Sustainability, presented activities of her institute.

The afternoon discussion gave further insight into possible areas of cooperation, covering a wide range of topics, from energy related to environmental issues, from chemicals to skills, employability, mobility and education. Both parties agreed to continue discussion on selected topics. The next joint activity is planned for the autumn of this year. One of the topics will be a roundtable on the employability survey commissioned by the JRC (see left) and involving the European Chemistry Thematic Network Association as coordinator as well as EuCheMS.

The meeting in Ispra was a follow-up action triggered at a previous meeting in Brussels at the JRC Headquarters in March, where the participants were Vladimir Šucha, Director General JRC, Elke Anklam, Director of the Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements, Ulrich Schubert, EuCheMS President, Francesco De Angelis, EuCheMS Treasurer and ECTN President, and Nineta Majcen. Šucha had emphasized the importance of collaboration between the JRC and the European chemical science community in order to intensify the science-policy interface.

Nineta Majcen, nineta.majcen@euchems.eu

EuCheMS responded to public consultations

Recently, EuCheMS participated in the European Union decision-making process by responding to several public consultations.

EuCheMS and the European Chemistry Thematic Network (ECTN) jointly responded to the public consultation on a ”European area of skills and qualifications”. The European Commission launched this consultation to collect the views of stakeholders and individuals. In EuCheMS' response, a special focus was put on the Chemistry Eurolabel as a quality standard, the register of European Chemist, the adoption of the franchising model for accreditation and the evolution of the communication system. Moreover, the response focused on the role of small and medium enterprises (SME), especially concerning entrepreneurial skills and quality assurance.

In its response to a public consultation on ”progress towards the 2020 energy efficiency objective and a 2030 energy efficiency policy framework” EuCheMS highlighted the most promising technology solutions that help deliver energy savings, such as cheaper and better insulating materials, high performance catalysis and next generation fuels, recycling technologies and the use of nanotechnology. EuCheMS based its contribution on its Roadmap ”Chemistry: developing solutions in a changing world”. The aim of this public consultation was to seek the opinions of all stakeholders on the issues related to energy efficiency policies and measures for 2020 and 2030.

Furthermore, EuCheMS responded to the public consultation on introducing the European Professional Card (EPC) for nurses, doctors, pharmacists, physiotherapists, engineers, mountain guides and real estate agents, and demanded the introduction of the EPC for chemists. The consultation was aimed at collecting the views of the concerned professions in order to see if the EPC is an appropriate tool and what impact it has on EU countries. Nevertheless, it was open also for non-regulated professions and EuCheMS used this possibility.

www.euchems.eu/publications/policy-positions

Report on energy storage

The Scientific and Technologic Option Assessment (STOA) of the European Parliament published the final report of the EuCheMS-STOA workshop on ”The energy storage challenge: which contribution from chemical sciences?”.

www.euchems.eu/publications/reports

New President of the Finnish Chemical Society

Kimmo Himberg has been elected as President of the Finnish Chemical Society for the term 2014 to 2016. Himberg holds a PhD in analytical chemistry from the University of Helsinki. In the 1980s he worked for the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. Over the next two decades he was the Director of the National Bureau of Investigation Forensic Laboratory. He is currently an adjunct professor in laboratory quality management at the University of Helsinki and has served in various expert roles for the Council of Europe, Interpol, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the European Police College. He was a founding member of the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes and served as its Chairman in 1999 to 2000 and 2003 to 2005. He has been the Rector of the Police University College of Finland since 2011.

EuCheMS at Expo 2015

EuCheMS and Consiglio Nazionale dei Chimici (CNC) join forces for the Expo 2015 in Milan, Italy, and have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to that effect. The main theme of the Expo will be ”Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”. EuCheMS and CNC believe that the Expo 2015 will provide a big opportunity for the promotion of chemical sciences and their impact on society. It will also provide a forum of exchange between scientists and general public. Topics will be: providing the world with food and energy, energy storage, renewable energy, new materials, status of European soils, remediation of contaminated ecosystems, food quality and chemical contaminants, biobased feedstock and availability of clean water at world level.

Nineta Majcen, www.expo2015.org/en

The EuCheMS Executive Board

The EuCheMS Newsletter introduces the EuCheMS Executive Board members. This issue goes on with Ivanka Popovic (Serbia) and Eckart Rühl (Germany).

Ivanka Popovic is currently Vice-Rector for Research at the University of Belgrade. She is a professor at the Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy involved in polymer science and engineering. She was the first female dean of the faculty (2006 to 2012). She was also the first female president of the Serbian Chemical Society (2009 to 2013). She co-chaired Euroanalysis 16 with Slavica Ražic in Belgrade in 2011. Popovic initiated and promoted the monograph ”First Female Chemists in Serbia”, authored by Ljiljana Ristic, in the International Year of Chemistry 2011. She is committed to sustainable development and was one of the founders of the Serbian Center for Cleaner Production in 2007 supported by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. She is devoted to the promotion of chemistry among school children, especially in the field of recycling. Ivanka Popovic is honored to have been elected the first Executive Board member from Serbia and is looking forward to contributing to the better understanding of the needs of smaller societies within EuCheMS.

Eckart Rühl studied chemistry and received his doctoral degree (1987) in physical chemistry from the Freie Universität (FU) Berlin, Germany. After several post-doctoral positions in France, United Kingdom, Canada and USA he received his habilitation in physical chemistry from FU Berlin in 1993. He became a professor of physics in 1995 at the University of Mainz and moved in 1996 to the University of Osnabrück for a chair for experimental physics with emphasis on environmental physics. From 2002 to 2006 he held a chair for physical chemistry at the University of Würzburg and then moved in 2006 to his present position as a professor of physical chemistry at the FU Berlin. His current research interests cover: size effects of matter; uptake of drugs, drug carriers and nanoparticles into skin; ultrafast dynamic processes; development and use of novel methods for spectroscopy and spectromicroscopy. He headed the EuCheMS Physical Chemistry Working Party from 2009 to 2011 and since 2011 is the head of the EuCheMS Physical Chemistry Division.

European schools compete for Top of the Bench title

The Top of the Bench competition is one of the Royal Society of Chemistry's longest-standing activities to enthuse and excite children with chemistry. Together with its members the RSC has been running it for more than 20 years. This year, for the first time, the competition became a truly European event.

In addition to the 28 regional competition heats organised by RSC Local Sections across the UK, the Belgium Local Section held the first ever European qualifier. Two teams of four 13- to 16-year-old students from the St George's International School Luxembourg competed against ten teams from seven schools in Belgium for a place in the Top of the Bench Final in Loughborough, United Kingdom, on 29 March 2014.

After a short written exam that tested the students' individual chemical know- ledge and data-interpretation skills and a practical chemistry team-exercise based on preparing a detergent from saponin (a component of horse chestnuts) one of the teams from the British School Brussels emerged as European heat winners.

Although the team from Brussels lost to the winning team from Ardingly College in the final, their teacher Jane Downing describes how taking part in the Top of the Bench competition was a success: ”Throughout the journey the students chattered non-stop about their chemistry, each trying to help the other revise the hardest topics.”

The next round of the competition will start in the autumn. If you know a school that might be interested in attending the local heat in Belgium or would like to find out more about the competition, visit the website http://rsc.li/totb.

Annika Grandison, grandisona@rsc.org

New EuCheMS Constitution

In October 2013, the EuCheMS General Assembly approved a new Constitution, for which the approval procedure at the Belgium authorities is currently in progress. On 28 March 2014, an Extraordinary General Assembly took place at the notary office in Brussels and the new Constitution was accepted. The new Constitution will come into force once it is published in the Official Belgian Gazette.

Sofia Minero, Nineta Majcen nineta.majcen@euchems.eu

The awards ceremony of the Société Chimique de France (SCF) is firmly rooted in the culture of the French chemists' network. Its fifth edition took place at Montpellier on 4 June 2014. Steven V. Ley (French-British Award) fascinated us with the prowess of microreactors in complex molecular synthesis; Anny Jutand (Joseph-Achille Le Bel Prize) convinced us that a rigorous approach to reaction mechanisms favours the design of new reactions, and Joël Moreau (Joseph-Achille Le Bel Prize) demonstrated that transdisciplinary crossings in molecular chemistry open many potential applications. Roberta Sessoli (French-Italian Award) brought us to discover magnetic chirality after molecular magnets. Pierre Braunstein (Pierre Süe Prize) showed that a fortuitous result opened innovative research paths.

Marie-Claude Vitorge

marie-claude.vitorge@

societechimiquedefrance.fr

General Assembly 2014

The next EuCheMS General Assembly will be held on 23 and 24 October 2014 in Torun, Poland. Online registration, detailed programme and other information is now available at www.euchems.eu/about/general-assembly.

Annual Report 2013

The first edition of the EuCheMS yearbook was launched recently. ”In addition to reporting what EuCheMS did in the past year and what projects are ongoing, it is also supposed to be an up-to-date reference on contact persons both in the EuCheMS bodies and the member societies,” says Ulrich Schubert, EuCheMS President, in his editorial. EuCheMS would appreciate getting much feedback, including criticism, on whether the yearbook is a useful source of information. kjs

www.euchems.eu/publications/reports

Executive Board meeting

Members of the EuCheMS Executive Board met on 20 June 2014 in the GDCh headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany. Main topics discussed were the creation of a Regulatory Committee, the EuCheMS Chemistry Congress in Istanbul and the following one in Sevilla, Spain, as well as an update on financial matters. In addition, the winners of the EuCheMS Award for Service and the EuCheMS Lecture Award were determined.

How to stay in contact with EuCheMS

Twitter: https://twitter.com/EuCheMS

Facebook: http://goo.gl/7skZ8W

Website: www.euchems.eu

Brussels Update (monthly):

www.euchems.eu/news/euchems-brussels-news-update.html

Newsletter (four times a year):

www.euchems.eu/news/euchems-newsletter.html

Events 2014

31 August — 4 September 2014 Istanbul, Turkey

5th EuCheMS Chemistry Congress

www.euchems-istanbul2014.org

7 — 10 September 2014, Prague, Czech Republic

22nd Conference on Isoprenoids www.vscht.cz/lam/isoprenoids/Isoprenoids.htm

7 — 11 September 2014, Lisbon, Portugal

EFMC-ISMC 2014 — 23rd International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry

11 — 12 September 2014, Vukovar, Croatia

15th Ruzicka Days

www.ptfos.unios.hr/ruzicka/2014/en

21 — 25 September 2014, Ischia, Italy

Ischia Advanced School of Organic Chemistry www.iasoc.it/home

5 — 09 July 2015, Bratislava, Slovakia

21st European Conference on Organometallic Chemistry, www.eucomcxxi.eu

23 — 26 August 2015, Vienna, Austria

15th European Conference on Solid State Chemistry 22 — 25 September 2015, Leipzig, Germany

15th EuCheMS International Conference on Chemistry and the Environment

www.icce2015.org

20 — 24 September 2015, Kalamata, Greece

9th International Conference on Instrumental Methods of Analysis-Modern Trends and Applications

www.ima2015.teikal.gr

Ten years SusChem

SusChem, the European Technology Platform for Sustainable Chemistry, celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. The 12th SusChem Stakeholder Event held on 11 and 12 June in Brussels set an appropriate frame for this event. About 250 registered participants discussed topics such as innovation in the European Union, the new SusChem Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda and innovation opportunities through combined funding.

In his address, Klaus Sommer, Chairman of the SusChem board, stressed that SusChem has played a major role in setting up the contractual public-private partnership ”Sustainable Process Industry through Resource and Energy Efficiency” (Spire). Today, however, SusChem needs to be even more proactive about communicating the benefits of sustainable chemistry and its impact for society. ”The chemical industry represents some eleven percent of all the economy in Europe — essentially nothing works without chemistry,” Sommer said. The Stakeholder Event was directly followed by a Brokerage Session where the participants presented current project ideas

Hans-Georg Weinig, h.weinig@gdch.de

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