Hellen Barbosa successfully defended her PhD thesis at the University of São Paulo

At the end of April, Hellen Barbosa successfully defended her PhD thesis on novel chitosan derivatives and their biological activities at her home university in São Paulo, Brazil. With a sandwich doctoral fellowship from CAPES, Hellen had spent half a year with us in 2017 to study some antimicrobial activities of the chitosan derivatives she had previously prepared and characterised in Brazil. These were Schiff bases of salicylaldehyde with some of the amino functions of chitosans, which were then further modified with glycidol to enhance their solubility. Finally, these chitosan derivatives were loaded with different heavy metals, namely zink, palladium, or platinum. She brought these different, well-characterised preparations to Münster and studied here their potential antimicrobial, plant strengthening, and anti-tumour activities, supported by our then postdoc Dr. Maha Attjioui. One paper based on this work is already published, and two more are in preparation. After her return to Brazil, she has been busy preparing her thesis and these manuscripts, and defending her thesis. But she has also analysed by thermogravimetric analysis some of our exciting new chitosans which Jasper Wattjes and Sruthi Sreekumar have recently prepared - an excellent story for yet another future joint publication. Hellen - we are sending all our best wishes to you and we do hope and trust that we will keep in contact and collaborating!