Prof. Eric Bakker
Events and News
April 2024: ISE Fellow
Eric is appointed as Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry "for his contributions to electroanalytic methodologies utilizing ion selective membranes on fundamental as well as application levels". It is a prestigious honour and Eric is grateful to Philippe Buhlmann (University of Minnesota) for having nominated him. See the ISE website for details.
April 2024: CHanalysis 2024 in Beatenberg
Most group members went to CHanalysis in Beatenberg where the analytical scientists of Switzerland met for the annual meeting of the Division of Analytical Science of the Swiss Chemical Society. Nikolai, Robin and Gabriel were selected for oral presentations and all others gave posters and associated poster pitches. Congrulations to Robin Nussbaum for an oral presentation award and to Yaotian Wu for best poster award! The conference program may be found by clicking on this link.
April 2024: Complutense University, Madrid
Eric participated in a full day symposium at the Complutense University in Mardid, Spain. He helped celebrate the 50th anniversary of the faculty of chemistry there as representative of Analytical Chemistry. See here for Symposium Newsletter (in Spanish).
February 2024: Charles N. Reilley Award
Eric received the Charles N. Reilley Award from the Society for Electroanalytical Chemistry at Pittcon in San Diego. There was also a separate session on ionophore-based sensors that was very well attended, and former group members of Mark Meyerhoff, who recently retired, spent a beautiful evening with him. The Eaglenos team also made it to Pittcon.
December 2023: Visit to China
Eric visited SusTech in Shenzhen (Xiaojiang Xie and Jingying Zhai) where he spent time with their group members as well as Tingting Han, and gave talks and lectures. At Southern Agricultural University in Guangzhou het met Aori Qileng and his supervisor Yingju Liu, and he also visited the Huawei Ox Horn campus.
December 2023: Polina's Doctoral Defence
Congratulations to Polina who successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis! Aleksandar Radu from Lincoln University in the UK and Ross Milton from our Department were the jury members.
November 2023: Group Outing
The group went out for a bowling night followed by an italian dinner. Great fun, and it was so nice to see Elena who came to see the group during her baby break!
November 2023: Welcome Sara Krivacic
We are happy to welcome Sara into our group. She is a visiting doctoral student from Petar Kassal's group at the University of Zagreb.
October 2023: Symposium in Point of Care Diagnostics in Sion
Ayian and Gabriel attended the Symposium in Point of Care Diagnostics in Sion (see conference program) and each presented a poster on their work. Congratulations to Gabriel for winning the best poster award!
September 2023: Welcome Andrea Nonis
Andrea is starting his doctoral studies with us after a successful Masters thesis in our group. His is changing projects, moving from constant potential coulometry to biosensors. Welcome Andrea!
September 2023: Welcome Justine Rothen
Justine already spent a fruitful and productive time in our group this past summer working on ion transfer voltammetry based on TEMPO redox probes and is now a Masters student member of our group. Welcome Justine!
September 2023: Welcome Laura Maloriol
Laura has joined our group as laboratory technician. She will primarily assist the efforts of Marylou in the area of voltammetric sensing of aquatic systems. Welcome Laura!
August 2023: Welcome Yupu Zhang
Yupu Zhang has joined us from SusTech in Shenzhen for her doctoral studies in our group. She is supported by the China Scholarship Program. Welcome Yupu!
August 2023: Doctoral Defence of Tara Forrest
Tara successfully defended her Ph.D., with Robert Gyurcsanyi from Budapest and Ross Milton (unige) on the committee. Congratulations Tara!
August 2023: Euroanalysis XXI in Geneva
Euroanalysis XXI took a number of years to organize but the day finally came and the meeting was a success. The group participated very actively, with short courses on membrane electrodes (Eric and Tara) and voltammetric aquatic probes (Marylou and Nicolas), a keynote lecture (Marylou), oral presentations (Tara and Robin), with many poster presentations and as helpers.
August 2023: Fall Meeting of the Swiss Chemical Society
Tara Forrest won best presentation award (runner up) from the Division of Analytical Sciences at the 2023 Fall Meeting of the Swiss Chemical Society held in Zurich. Congratulations Tara!
August 2023: Doctoral Defence of Anika Hoffmann
Anika, a doctoral student doing her work with Franka Kalman at HES-SO Valais on modernizing LAL tests with chromatographic methods, successfully defended her Ph.D. from the University of Geneva. Jury members were Agnes Dienes-Nagy, Jean-Luc Veuthey, Congratulations Anika and all the best for your future!
July 2023: Visiting Monash University
Eric was a Platinum lecturer at the Department of Chemical and Bioengineering at Monash University in Melbourne. It was great to see Kye Robinson again, who now works at CSIRO, as well as host Simon Corrie and many other members of the department.
June 2023: Visiting University of New South Wales
Eric visited the group of Justin Gooding at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, where he gave a seminar in the school of chemistry.
July 2023: Visiting James Cook University
Eric visited James Cook University in Townsville where he met Yang Liu.
April 2023: Visit to Nanjing
Eric visited Nanjing University where he was hosted by Dechen Jiang and gave a seminar in the school of chemistry. He also met Yu Qin, Xiaojiang Xie, Jiawang Ding and Tingting Han as part of a sensor symposium at Eaglenos.
March 2023: CHanalysis 2023
The group participated at CHanalysis 2023 in Beatenberg, Switzerland, where Tara and Yaotian gave oral presentations and the other group members presented posters. Aori Qileng was awarded best post award, congratulations!
December 2022: Celebrating the Escalade with a Marmite
The group celebrated the Escalade, a Geneva tradition that commemorates the failed invasion in 1602. A chocolate marmite is broken and tastefully eaten.
December 2022: End of Year Group Party
The group enjoyed a fun night out, first with a few rounds of bowling at the Bowling La Praille in Carouge, then with a nice dinner at the restaurant La Bourse. Special guests were Yoshiki Soda, coming for a visit from Japan, and Eric's wife Eva and daughter Colette.
November 2022: Solutions in Chemistry conference in Croatia
Eric gave a talk at the "Solutions in Chemistry" Conference in Croatia, with the title "Sensing Solutions". Please see the conference website for more information. It was a good meeting with excellent interactions between the attendees. The pictures show Petar Kassal and his group members Irena and Sara (shown from left to right).
November 2022: Visit of Simon Corrie
Simon Corrie from Monash University visited the group and gave a talk on optical nanosensors and self-reporting, reversible antibodies.
November 2022: Welcome to Aori Qileng
Our group is welcoming Aori Qileng from South China Agricultural University, who has won a China Scholarship Grant to spend a year with us on the theme of self-powered sensors.
October 2022: Visit of Prof. Xiaojiang Xie
It was a pleasure to see Xiaojiang Xie again, a former doctoral student (Ph.D. in 2015) who visited from SusTech in Shenzhen, China, where is Associate Professor.
October 2022: Ph.D. Defence of Yoshiki Soda
Yoshiki successfully defended his doctoral thesis, congratulations! Jury members were Lisa Hall from the University of Cambridge and Takuji Adachi from Physical Chemistry. Yoshiki will join the group of Justin Gooding at UNSW in Sydney for a postdoc.
October 2022: Sensing Probe Deployment at Léxplore Platform
Tara, Thomas and Stéphane deployed a multianalyte potentiometric probe from the Léxplore platform in Lake Geneva today. The probe is completely built in house, powered by solar panels and fully controllable remotely. What a beautiful October day. The probe is attached below the floating control unit at a depth of 15 m and can measure continuously for weeks.
September 2022: Ph.D. Defence of Canwei Mao
Mao successfully defended his doctoral thesis, with Thomas Buergi (Physical Chemistry, University of Geneva) and Tom Lindfors (Abo Akademi in Turku, Finland) as jury members. Mao is planning to join the group of Grzegorz Lisak at Nanyang University in Singapore as a postdoc. Congratulations, Mao!
September 2022: Funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation
We thank the Swiss National Science Foundation for supporting our project "Innovative Sensing Principles at Selective Interfaces" for a period of four years (grant number 200021_212462). This is wonderful news.
September 2022: Swiss Chemical Science Night
The Swiss Chemical Society celebrated the 2022 Prize winners at the Casino in Bern. Eric gave the laudatio for the METAS prize in Metrology to Kamyar Mehrabi from ETH Zurich, honored for his work on using droplet microfluidics to perform online matrix matched calibration of nanoparticle detection with ICP-TOF-MS (group of Detlef Günther).
September 2022: Swiss Chemical Society Fall Meeting
Most groups members attended the Fall Meeting of the Swiss Chemical Society, which took place in person at the University of Zurich. Congratulations to Yoshiki Soda for winning a poster prize in the Session "Polymers, Colloids & Interfaces"!
June 2022: Matrafured Meeting in Visegrad
Some 150 researchers met for the Matrafured Meeting on Chemical Sensors in Visegrad, Hungary. This conference takes place every 2 to 3 years and this was the 50th anniversary of the series. Most of the research group traveled to Hungary for this event. Please see the Matrafured Conference Website for more information.
June 2022: ESEAC in Vilnius
Eric gave an invited talk at the 18th International Conference on Electroanalysis (ESEAC) in Vilnius, Lithuania, which had been postponed to 2022. It was a very nice meeting with ample opportunity to talk to other researchers. Please see the ESEAC Conference Website for more information.
May 2022: Ph.D. defence of Pitchnaree Kraikaew
Pitchnaree successfully defended her doctoral thesis, with Johan Bobacka (Abo Akademi, Finland) and Ross Milton as jury members. Congratulations, Pitchnaree! She is moving back to Thailand to work for the National Nanotechnology Center of the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) in Pathumthani.
May 2022: CHanalysis Meeting in Beatenberg
Swiss analytical scientists met again at CHanalysis in Beatenberg, in the mountain scenery of the bernese oberland. It was an excellent meeting and gave the opportunity to see fellow scientists in person again. Andrew deMello from ETH Zurich was honored with the Simon Widmer Award, presented by Eric in his role as president of the Division of Analytical Sciences of the Swiss Chemical Society. Please go to the CHanalysis Conference Website and read the Meeting Report.
March 2022: Funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation
We thank the Swiss National Science Foundation for supporting our project "Advanced in situ sensing systems for high-resolution speciation in aquatic ecosystems" for a period of four years (grant number 200021_207373), with Marylou Tercier-Waeber as co-applicant and Susanne Alloisio, Bas Ibelings, Isabelle Worms, Joerg Schaefer, Melina Abdou and Dario Omanovic as project partners. Read about this project here.