University of Groningen
Biomimetic metal-mediated reactivity
Wegeberg, Christina
IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below.
Document Version
Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record
Publication date: 2019
Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database
Citation for published version (APA):
Wegeberg, C. (2019). Biomimetic metal-mediated reactivity. University of Groningen.
Copyright
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons).
Take-down policy
If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum.
Propositions
Accompanying the thesis
BIOMIMETIC METAL-MEDIATED REACTIVITY
Christina Wegeberg
1. In the literature on the catalytic behavior of selective iron-metal based oxidants, there seems to be a great desire to conclude that a catalyst can perform both HAT and OAT mechanisms. It must however be more constructive to develop a catalyst that only does one or the other extremely well.
2. The control experiments that potentially can kill the hoped for potency of your catalyst should always be carried out first.
3. Spectroscopy is not by definition a non-innocent technique (chapter 8).
4. Interpreting resonance Raman spectra of transient iron intermediates in solution feels like searching for a tiny bug on an elephant’s back. However, after many days in blindness and frustration, the bugs often turn into glow worms and you can thereafter not fail to see them as big signals. But be careful – in your desire to explain your chemistry, you might start to see signals that are not real!
5. Even though highly used, H2O2 does not seem to be the terminal oxidant of choice for selective oxidation
catalysis; there will always be the risk of generating free and reactive hydroxyl radicals (chapter 6). 6. It is of course good to have an idea of the science one is doing, but sometimes the best way to analyze your
data is with a completely open mind and without prejudice. Unexpected results might show up.
7. Going through your old labbooks in the last year of your PhD can save you for a lot of days in the lab. Often you have already done the experiment months or years ago – you just forgot or did not understand the importance of the experiment at the time.
8. Having two PhD supervisors in two different countries with different backgrounds and speaking different languages is not necessarily a hindrance to complete one’s PhD within time in two PhD systems with two different protocols.
9. Is your supervisor always right?
One PhD supervisor about the other PhD supervisor; apparently, they do not always agree. In the end you just have to grow up and make up your own mind about how your research project should progress. 10. A PhD project never turns out as you imagine or plan – nor should it!
11. As a nonnative English-speaking PhD student, it is very beneficial to have native English-speaking supervisors, but sometimes it can also be rather complicated with the large variation in vocabulary and expressions. For instance, is tpena most certainly not German, but rather germane.
12. A very good way to understand the impact of your own work is to write the introduction of your PhD thesis half a year before submission in calmness without “thesis stress” hereby setting all of your hard work into perspective.
13. At rejse er at leve. H. C. Andersen, 1855.
It is rather choking after three years of PhD to realize that one-third of the time has been spend abroad – doing a PhD is the perfect playground for a globetrotter!
