We are very happy to announce the 7th Open Lab event!

You are curious to find out what the other PhD students in our Chemistry Department are working on? This is exactly why we launched the Open Lab Project two years ago!

This time Prof. Jeffrey Bode (Organic Chemistry) and his group open their doors and present their work for you so you can get a deeper look inside their labs and research. Learn about:

- Shape-Shifting Molecules
- NHC Catalysis
- Ligation and Peptides
- New Heterocyclic Scaffolds and Methodologies

Time: November 17th, 5.00 PM
Location: HCI 3 – F-floor

Prof. Bode will also kindly provide food and drinks.

Dear colleagues,

VAC, the Union of the Assistants at the Chemical Laboratories of ETH Zurich, cordially invites you to its

General Assembly
on
November, 15th, 2011 at 6 pm
on the upper floor of HXE (the orange building across the street from HCI).

We will provide you with a compact overview of the current members of the VAC, its activities organized during the period of 2010/2011 and what it can do for YOU.

After discharging the old board, you will have the opportunity to apply for a position as a member of the executive board (either representing your institute or in the functions of the president or finance master, etc.; also see the information below the form) or one of the commissions of the D-CHAB.

You can bring forward your own ideas or simply find out who your next representative will be (maybe you need to contact them one day).

For more details, refer to this agenda.

Always an option: Just join us, listen and enjoy the

Free Cheese Fondue!

Wine and soft drinks will be free as well, beer will be sold.
IMPORTANT:
It is mandatory to register on this webpage until Friday, November 11th, so that we can plan how much fondue we will need.
We are looking forward to seeing you there.

Join the VAC as a new member of the board!

The VAC is constantly striving to improve the social life at the ETH Chemistry Department by organizing various theme parties, sports happenings but also scientifically interesting events such as our Open Lab project or the recent trip to a nuclear power plant.

At the general assembly, we are going to vote for the new Executive Board of 2012 and this is your chance to join our team!

Imagine you have a cool idea for an event and get to realize it in no time: No problem in the VAC, we are quite the opposite of bureaucratic. Amidst the VAC, you will find very friendly and open people who enjoy organizing an event as a team. You will get valuable insights into the political structure of our university and you are now in the position to change things if unsatisfactory.

Curious? Contact us at: czarniecki@inorg.chem.ethz.ch

The three associations VECS (former chemistry students association), VAC (chemistry PhD students association) and VCS (chemistry students association) invite you cordially to a common barbecue.

It will take place next Tuesday, 4th of October 2011, at 17.30 in the HXE-building (upper floor).

Meat, non-alcoholic beverages, beer, wine, salad, bread and chips will be provided for free by the three associations, but make sure to register so we can organize appropriate amounts of food and drinks.

The CCES is looking for applicants for their Winter School “Science Meets Practice”.  It’s main topic is about how to lead dialogues with people and institutions that are outside of the scientific community.

It will be held in a two-block course, the first part being from Januray 9th to 12th and the second one being from February 6th to 9th.

Further information  about the course such as prices, location participants, program etc. can be found online at www.cces.ethz.ch/winterschool.

For sure you all know the famous PhDcomics! You might not know yet the PhDmovie though.
Therefore we cordially invite you to the screening of this movie (organized by VAC and Mittwochsfilm) on Wednesday, 21. September 2011 at 19.15 in the HIT E51 (next to the WOKA restaurant).

There will be food and beverages available to buy.

If you can not make it next Wednesday, save the following date:
Wednesday, 7. December 2011 at 19.00, Audimax, ETH center (and additional seats in HG F5) for a second screening of the PhDmovie followed by a Q&A at 20.15 with Jorge Cham, the author of the PhDcomics, live! This event is organized by AVETH.

We are looking forward to meet you on one or both occasions!

Due to the bad weather forecast for Saturday, we have to cancel the tournament.

VAC and PSA invite you to their beach-volleyball tournament, the “PharmChemCup 2011“!

When: 23.07.2011, 10.00 AM: registration and payment, 10.30 AM: start of the games
Where: ETH Science City Sport Center
How: mixed teams (4 players on the field, at least one woman, rotating during the game is allowed). The registration of single players is possible too. Each team will have to allocate one referee.

Registration fee: 5 CHF per person

After the tournament: barbecue at the VAC Lounge. Softdrinks and bread will be sponsored by VAC and PSA and we will sell some beer for as low as 1 CHF – BUT bring your own meat! Salads and desserts are welcome!

The VAC kindly invites you to join us to our
“70’s and 80’s Revival Barbecue”,
on May 18th on the new roof terrace on the second finger of the HCI building starting from 6.00 PM.
Since the VAC has just finished installing its new lounge on the roof terrace, we would like to invite you to join us there for barbecuing and dancing.
We decided to revive last summer’s 70’s and 80’s dancing event as the motto for the evening and give you the chance to relax, unwind and get into the swing of things by listening to all those songs you danced to way back when…!
And, as always, if you dress according to style, you will get a free drink.
If you can resist the charm of dancing away those good old tunes, you are, of course, welcome to just hang out with us, put a steak on the grill (Please note that this is a bring your own meat barbecue. However, we will provide salads, bread, drinks and a grill-chef), have a drink and maybe end up covertly tapping your feet to the beat.
So, come and join us and let’s rock the roof terrace!

On top of the 2nd finger of the HCI building, the VAC has had a Lounge installed. In summer, it is ideal for all kinds of aperos, e.g. after PhD defenses. It can be booked by any person from the D-CHAB. To check the availability of the lounge, have a look at the calendar (We try to update this as often as possible, but it can happen that the most recent reservations are not yet up-to-date). To book the VAC Lounge, first go to ETH Immobilien in the HCI Loge in E3.1 and fill in the form available there to obtain the permission to stay at the VAC Lounge. Once you have obtained this permission, contact our webmaster to confirm your booking and to make sure you can receive the keys.
The rent of the lounge costs 25 CHF and there is a deposit of 175 CHF to give when you receive the keys from us.
Here also some pictures from the lounge:

Winter is still not over and temperatures are still quite cold. Therefore, VAC invites you to its yearly

Waffles and hot mulled wine

On Wednesday, 02.03.2011, from 5.30 on

In front of the 2nd finger (HCI)

Come and enjoy!

Your VAC

Our Open Lab Project where we give you a tour to a selection of interesting labs in our Chemistry Departement is going into the next round.

Prof. Petra Dittrich (Bioanalytics) invites you to get a deeper look inside her lab and hence, the world of miniaturization. The students want to give you an idea of their work and prepare some nice experiments to show you the world of microfluidics. There will be different examples for:

- Chip fabrication processes
- The principle of laminar flow
- Droplets in chips and
- What is possible by including valves

Additionally, interested people (the first 5 people who register) have the opportunity to visit the FIRST (cleanroom facilities of ETH). For those, it is important to know, that a positive response leads to a mandatory joining to the visit. (Telling the team of FIRST who will be these 5 persons is necessary due to safety issues). This will already start at 5.30PM!

Time: February 24th, 6.00 PM (approx. 1 h)
Location: E 312 (Third Finger)
Entry: Free

Afterwards Prof. Dittrich will invite you to an Apéro.

Since space is limited, we can only handle 20 people.

See you on Thursday!