2017 was a complicated year for various reasons here in Mexico (and some personal health issues) but nonetheless I’m very proud of the performance of everyone at the lab whose hard work and great skills keep pushing our research forward.

Four new members joined the team and have presented their work at the national meeting for CompChem for the first time. Also, for the first time, one of my students, Gustavo Mondragón, gave a talk at this meeting with great success about his research on the Fenna Matthews Olson complex of photosynthetic bacteria.

The opportunity to attend WATOC at Munich presented me the great chance to meet wonderful people from around the world and was even kindly and undeservingly invited to write the prologue for an introductory DFT book by Prof. Pedro Cerón from Spain. I hope to Jeep up with the collaborations abroad such as the one with the Mirkin group at Nortgwestern and the one with my dear friend Kunsagi-Mate Sándor at Pecsi Tudomanyegyetem (Hungary), among many others; I’m thankful for their trust in our capabilities.

Two members got their BSc degrees, Marco an Durbis, the latter also single handedly paved the way for us to develop a new research line on the in silico drug developing front; his relentless work has also been praised by the QSAR team at the Institute of Chemistry with which he has collaborated by performing toxicity calculations for the agrochemical industry as well as by designing educational courses aimed to the dissemination of our work and QSAR in general among regulatory offices and potential clients. We’re sad to see him go next fall but at the same time we’re glad to know his scientific skills will further develop.

I cannot thank the team enough: Alejandra Barrera, Gustavo Mondragón, Durbis Castillo, Fernando Uribe, Juan Guzman, Alberto Olmedo, Eduardo Cruz, Ricardo Loaiza and Marco Garcia; may 2018 be a great year for all of you.

And to all the readers thank you for your kind words, I’m glad this little space which is about to become nine years old is regarded as useful; to all of you I wish a great 2018!

 

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