April 14, 2023, 13:30-14:00, University of Zurich, Irchel Campus, lecture hall G40. The minutes are published in CHIMIA 5/2023 and on the website.

1. Welcome; Approval of the Agenda
During the lunch break of the SCS Spring Meeting, Christian Bochet, President, and David Spichiger, Executive Director, opened the assembly and welcomed all members/attendees. The agenda was approved.

2. Election of the Vote Counter
At the beginning 21 SCS members were present and until the end of the assembly 35 participants joined the assembly. In consideration of the manageable number of votes, David Spichiger proposed to take over the counting. The assembly approved the proposal unanimously.

3. Minutes from the 32st GA from April 22, 2022
The minutes were published in CHIMIA (2022, 76, No. 5, A496f).
The minutes were approved unanimously and without abstention.

4. Annual Report 2022
The annual report was published in CHIMIA (2023, 77, No. 1-2, A91ff). It was approved unanimously.

5. Financial Report 2022 and Audit Report
David Spichiger presented the financial statement. Operating incomes of CHF 1’827’926 and operating expenses of CHF -1’830’336 result in an operating loss before taxes of CHF -2’410. The portfolio at Bank von Graffenried followed the trend of the financial markets and a loss of -485’330 resulted. Considering taxes, non-periodic income, cost allocation to the funds and the dissolution of 450’000 asset fluctuation buffer an overall surplus of CHF +103’921 resulted.
The assets of all SCS funds decreased by CHF -154’901.
As of 31.12.2022 the assets summed up to CHF 4’566’936.
Audit Report: In the audit report from April 4, 2023, provided by BDO AG, Bern, no inconsistencies are mentioned, and the financial statement fulfills the legal requirements according to the SCS bylaws and the Swiss Civil law.
The assembly approved the financial statement 2022 and the audit report unanimously with no abstention.

6. Discharge the Organs of the Society
The assembly discharged the board members and the financial audit unanimously with four abstentions.

7a. Elections: SCS Executive Board, ExB (and BoD)
The assembly confirmed unanimously
- Maud Reiter, Firmenich SA, as treasurer and member with signing rights in twos for a second term (2024-2026). As ExB member, she also takes a seat on the Board of Directors ex-officio.

7b. Elections: SCS Board of Directors, BoD, and Financial Audit
The assembly confirmed the re-elections for a second term of:
- Leslie Fendt, F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG (2024-2026)
- Corinne Jud, Agroscope (2024-2026)
The assembly elected:
- Tomas Bürgi, University of Geneva, as member (and president of the Division Fundamental Research) with no signing rights.
The three elected persons accepted their election.

The following BoD member stepped down and the entry in the commercial register will be deleted with immediate effect.
- Stefan Willitsch, University of Basel.

The assembly confirmed BDO AG, Bern unanimously as audit instance for the financials 2023.

8. Membership fees
The annual membership fees 2024 were approved unanimously:
Regular member CHF 150.00
Student member CHF 50.00
Retired member / unemployed members CHF 80.00
Institutional member (institutions) CHF 800.00
SCS Partnership (institutions) CHF 3’000.00

Additional Fees for Divisions
Industrial & Applied Chemistry - Regular/Student CHF 20.00
                                                                       - Company CHF 100.00
Photochemistry Section - Regular CHF 40.00
                                                       - Student CHF 20.00
15% discount on collective memberships for university research groups.

9. News and Strategic Projects
The Board of Directors decided on the following, strategic initiatives that will be pushed in the coming months:
- Establish the network to stimulate industry jobs for Ph.D. students and internships for MSc.
- Further strengthen relationship to industry and include industrial speakers in teaching at Universities and Summer Schools.
- Implement SCS Mentoring Program to accelerate the personal and professional development of mentees. The focus of the SCS Mentoring Program is on career development.
- Merger of the Division Polymers, Colloids and Interfaces with the Materials Chemistry network as of January 2024.

10. Event Outlook 2023
In 2023 twenty-nine conferences and symposia took place or will take place under the direct organization of SCS. In addition, four SCS Lectureship are planned and a dozen of smaller, local, events will be organized.
The list of SCS events is updated regularly and is available on http://scg.ch/events.

11. Varia
No requests to speak were requested from the audience. The President thanked for the confidence and closed the meeting.

Zurich, April 14, 2023

Prof. Christian Bochet                   David Spichiger  
President                                               Executive Director

Documents

SCS General Assembly 2023: Presentation
 
SCS General Assembly 2023: Minutes
 

David Spichiger, SCS
21.04.2023

The 2022 EuChemS Yearbook was released in early March. It contains all the activities of EuChemS over the course of the last year.

EuChemS was involved in numerous scientific and science-policy related undertakings in 2022. The yearbook provides descriptions of policy related advisory groups and events of EuChemS – including, but not limited to stakeholder group participations and policy workshops -, as well as its efforts to strengthen the European chemistry community – most notably the 8th EuChemS Chemistry Congress in Lisbon. It also lists EuChemS Science Communication initiatives and data, as well as information on the constitution of the 2022 Executive board, Divisions, Member Societies and secretariat.

The production of the yearbook was coordinated by the EuChemS Secretariat, but many more members of EuChemS contributed to ensuring the high quality and accuracy of the publication.

We are delighted to invite you to read our 2022 yearbook, and we would be happy to hear about any feedback you may have!

Read the 2022 EuChemS Yeabook

 

David Spichiger, SCS | Marton Kottmayer, EuChemS
15.03.2023

Pure and Applied Chemistry (PAC), the flagship journal of the International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), is undergoing a strategic review. Our goal is to evaluate the purpose and direction of PAC to ensure that it meets the ever-changing needs and expectations of its authors and readers and contributes fully to the IUPAC vision and mission.

PAC was launched in 1960 with a specific purpose: to publish works that emerge from the international scientific events and projects that are sponsored and undertaken by IUPAC. The objectives of the journal are to publish:

  • Papers based upon authoritative lectures presented at IUPAC-sponsored conferences, symposia, and workshops.
  • Papers or collections of papers by invitation, as special topic features.
  • IUPAC Recommendations on nomenclature, symbols, and units.
  • IUPAC Technical Reports on standardization, recommended procedures, collaborative studies, data compilations, etc.

With dramatic changes in scholarly publishing and emerging initiatives in Open Science, is a new future direction warranted? Should the journal’s purpose and scope change? Who is the target audience and what does IUPAC provide that is unique? Should there be a new format? Etc.

We need your input – to learn how PAC is used in its current print and digital versions; what content is most valuable; what needs to be added or changed; what features and functionalities are absolutely essential for the provision of an enjoyable and informative reader experience.  Please take a few minutes to complete the following survey before 17th March 2023.  Your comments and suggestions are most welcome, and you can also contact me directly at the email address below.

My sincere thanks in advance for your input.

Leah McEwen, Chair
IUPAC Committee on Publications and Cheminformatics Data Standards (CPCDS)

Link to the survey: https://www.research.net/r/PAC_2

 

David Spichiger, SCS
23.02.2023

«2022 represented for most of us the so much expected light at the end of the tunnel! After two years of cancelled or virtualized events, we finally could proceed with most of our activities the way they should have been. In particular, the Spring meeting and the general assembly (in Geneva), on one hand, and the Fall meeting (in Zürich) were a formidable opportunity to reconnect with each other. The joy that could be read on everyone’s face was a clear testimony of the necessity of human interactions in our activity. And this is an important message for us at the SCS, that we should continue to promote the organization of many meetings, a strategic orientation what was taken some years ago and recently intensified.» 
Prof. Christian Bochet, President of the SCS

After two years of limited opportunities to hold on-site events due to the COVID pandemic restrictions, the SCS was finally able to return to normality with its activities. After two online events in the beginning of the year, we had the opportunity to successfully hold close to twenty on-site symposia and congresses respectively and were able to generate an important contribution to the exchange between academia and industry.

One of the highlights was the second Swiss Chemistry Science Night at the Casino Bern, where more than 120 invited guests enjoyed the evening and celebrated the SCS Award Winners 2022.

In addition to the well-established activities that are part of the SCS program for years and are mentioned later in this annual report, we focused on the following, new or specific initiatives in 2022: 

  • provide event organization services for third parties and support partners to implement onsite or virtual conferences.
  • further develop the IT infrastructure for SCS events.
  • extend the SCS Partnership program to 23 companies.
  • collaborate with LS2 to expand the intellectual property and patent seminar program to include industrial participants.
  • establish of a task force to address the structural deficit be-tween Universities, Government, and Industry to offer adequate career entry opportunities

The Swiss Chemical Society is a not-for-profit organization. Its programs are financed through sponsoring contributions, publishing, revenues from activities, and the membership-fees. Part of the programs of the society receive support from the SCS-Foundation. The foundation accepts financial contributions from institutional and private donors for activities exempt from taxation. We would like to thank all our members, sponsors and partners who supported us financially and logistically in 2022.

Furthermore, we related to many organizations to support and implement all the interesting projects and initiatives.

Please enjoy reading through the 2022 annual report that shows again a very active and lively society

Prof. Christian Bochet                  David Spichiger
President                                              Executive Director

 

 

The SCS Annual Report is also published in CHIMIA Volume 77, No 1-2/2023

 

Céline Wittwer, SCS
22.02.2023

On behalf of the Local Organizing Committee of the IUPAC World Chemistry Congress, we want to remind you that it is still possible to submit abstracts of lectures and poster abstracts for IUPAC|CHAINS 2023 in The Hague from 20 till 25 August.
We received already a lot of input but the submissions from the European countries are somewhat behind compared to the rest of the world.

Abstract Submission
Deadline for submission is Wednesday 15 February 2023. All information regarding submission guidelines and (sub)themes, can be found in this link: www.iupac2023.org/abstracts

Registration Discount for SCS Members
Also please keep in mind that the registration will open on Wednesday 15 February 2023! Click here to directly put a reminder in your agenda.
As a partner society of the KNCV, we would like to invite you and all your members to join us in Connecting Chemical Worlds. We aim to connect disciplines of chemistry and getting academia, industry, junior and senior researchers to share what they love most about this beautiful science and help chemistry in answering the problems of tomorrow.
Members of the SCS can register with a 10% discount of the regular prize (not applicable in combination with other discounts). The discount code will be available in the SCS members portal when the registration opens!

Apply for a travel grant
To cover your travel costs, you can apply for a Swiss Chemistry Travel Award. Deadline to submit your application is March 31, 2023: https://scg.ch/scg-news/2816-chemistry-travel-award-2023

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us via .

Best regards,
Local Organizing Committee IUPAC|CHAINS 2023

 

David Spichiger, SCS
08.02.2023

  1. SCS Partnerships: five companies joined the program in the past months
  2. ChemistryEurope, is now open for submissions with APCs waived until 2025!
  3. Welcome Message 2023 from the New SCS Academy Manager Sarah Schmitz
  4. Become a Volunteer for the International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO), Zürich, in July 2023!

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