It is with great pleasure that I’d like to announce the thesis defense of Guillermo “ Memo ” Caballero and Howard Diaz who in past days became the second and third students, respectively, to get their B.Sc. degrees with theses completed at our lab.

So many events going on and so little time to blog about. Two weeks ago, four members of this group traveled to Morelia in southern Mexico to present their research at the XIII Mexican Physical Chemistry Meeting. The next week after that, they all brought their posters back to Toluca for the internal symposium at CCIQS, where a masters student, María Eugenia, gave a small talk about her research project concerning photosynthesis in bacteria.

As far as population analysis methods goes, the Quantum Theory of Atoms in Molecules (QTAIM) a.k.a Atoms in Molecules (AIM) has become a popular option for defining atomic properties in molecular systems, however, its calculation is a bit tricky and maybe not as straightforward as Mulliken’s or NBO.

I had a blast last week at WATOC2014 in Santiago de Chile! It was a wonderful opportunity to find old friends, meet new ones and listen to some exciting research done around the world, as well as some of the classics such as Pekka Pyykkö, who was awarded the Schrödinger medal. I decided to share my talk on SlideShare.com but also here because I found at WATOC that many many people seem to like this little space of mine!

I inexcusably forgot to write about my visit to WATOC2014 but as they say it’s better late than never. I’ve been here in Santiago de Chile for a day and a half now attending mostly to session 5 “applications to compelling problems”. WATOC (World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists) is probably the largest conference in our speciality and some of the big names are here which makes me very nervous to present my talk!

This is my first time giving a talk at the ACS meeting so I’m a tad nervous but also excited about the possibility to listen to so many great researchers and hopefully interact with some of them, although such a massive event is hardly the best place to build a network.

Well, I only contributed with the theoretical section by doing electronic structure calculations, so it isn’t really a paper we can ascribe to this particular lab, however it is really nice to see my name in JACS along such a prominent researcher as Prof. Chad Mirkin from Northwestern University, in a work closely related to my area of research interest as macrocyclic recognition agents.

Just as last year, the “Dolphin Summer Internship Program” (Programa Delfín) has started and this time it coincided with #RealTimeChem week. Four students from various cities (and accents) around Mexico have come to our lab in Toluca in order to spend about 7 weeks of research in the field of molecular modeling and within our research of molecular recognition in biochemistry.

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to give a talk to a small university in southern Mexico called ‘Universidad de la Cañada‘ in the state of Oaxaca, one of the most underprivileged states in our nation.

So the World Cup is once again on top of us. I’m not a Football (Soccer) enthusiast but I’ve got to admit that the expectation of such a large and widely covered event is pretty contagious.

On Friday May 30th, my good friend Dr. Josefina Aldeco, my wife and I, visited a children’s home in Querétaro (central Mexico) and brought them a few cool chemistry experiments for a short show. This event was promoted by a non-profit organization called “ Anímate a estudiar ” (Dare to study), namely by Mrs.