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Not everything that matters in a year is measurable or shareable in a single update. 2025 reminded us that early-career growth happens just as much in doubt and challenge as it does in achievement. Our daily lives were filled with quiet challenges, personal reflections, and unexpected insights that influenced how we show up at work and beyond. In a talk with a couple of our PhD students, we reflect on those moments and what they revealed about us.

Looking back at this year, what accomplishment or milestone in your research are you most proud of, and why?

Job: A happy accident sparked a project: during a test with new equipment, I mistakenly swapped an additive, yet the error led to unexpectedly superior results. This discovery, born from careful observation, now forms a key part of my thesis. it shows keeping proper track of your work and attention to detail can lead to interesting discoveries.

Guillaume: I have orally presented my research twice, once at an international conference in Croatia. This has allowed me to overcome my discomfort at speaking in English in front of a large audience, and has given me confidence in my presentation skills and scientific ability.

Yihua: Looking back, the highlight of my year was spending three months on exchange in Bologna. Working closely with many talented young researchers there, really broadened my perspective and inspired me.

Leon: My main takeaway of the year has been learning how to build consistency and confidence in my research. Progress isn’t linear, so finding the right pace and understanding where dead ends lie has been key. Preparing my first paper has been the highlight of the year, showing that I can guide a project from idea to experiment to a complete written work.

What was the biggest challenge you faced this year, and how did you overcome it or learn from it?

Guillaume: Reproducibility turned out to be a valuable learning point. Differences in reaction outcomes were linked to batch-to-batch variations in a commercial starting material, which initially played an unexpected role in product formation. By adjusting our purification strategy or sourcing from a different supplier, we were able to make the process more reliable.

Leon: In a fast-paced world, it’s easy to lose motivation when things don’t work immediately. My biggest challenge this year was keeping the bigger picture in mind and trusting that progress happens even when it’s not obvious. I haven’t fully overcome this yet, but it has pushed me to show up consistently for myself and my project.

Job: While preparing for my midterm defense, I worried my results fell short of Ph.D. expectations. But as I reviewed my presentation, I realized I actually had more than enough. This proved that trusting the process works, even if confidence in the process only arrives at the end....

Yihua: The biggest challenge I faced was hitting some major research bottlenecks in my project. With help of Tom and Koen, and their guidance on many single crystals structures, I was able to work through most of these issues and get things back on track.

How has this past year shaped your goals or perspective as a researcher moving forward?

Yihua: This past year has taught me the importance of patience as a PhD student, especially when progress doesn’t follow a straight line. Moving forward, I hope to explore a new research direction next year, while building on the momentum and perspective I’ve gained (and finishing this project before the end of the year, for what we keep our fingers crossed!).

Job: This past year, I’ve watched programming and automation starting to be more integrated in chemical research (I guess one of the few positives of the booming AI bubble). Once, I saw my tinkering with PCs and coding as separate from my work, but now I realize there’s huge potential to merge them. Maybe even already during my PhD.

Leon: This year has made me even hungrier for what research can offer! Combining my hobbies with research through social media, graphic design, and PR showed me how many opportunities exist. It reinforced that being proactive, connecting with others, and collaborating are essential, and I’m excited to make the most of that in the year ahead.

Guillaume: This past year allowed me to expand my thesis by incorporating a new side project on RAM deracemisation, broadening my technical skill set and perspective as a researcher. While identifying a suitable system proved more challenging than expected, the experience has refined my understanding of the practical limits of certain approaches and helped me recalibrate my goals for combining mechanochemistry and crystal engineering moving forward.

While our journeys this year looked different, they were all shaped by growth beyond the lab bench: through collaboration, confidence-building, and unexpected opportunities. If 2025 taught us anything, it’s that early-career research is not about having all the answers, but about asking better questions and showing up consistently. As we move into the next year, we do so with renewed motivation and a deeper appreciation for the process.

Looking back at your time here, what experience or moment had the biggest impact on who you’ve become as a researcher and as a person?

The biggest impact for me was the transition from being a very hands-on PhD researcher to taking on a more senior, leadership-focused role during my postdoc.

During my PhD I was doing everything myself: planning and running the experiments, analyzing the data and writing the papers. As a postdoc, especially while co-supervising a team of three PhD students together with Prof. Tom Leyssens, this changed completely. I had to step back from doing all the work myself and instead trust others with crucial parts of the projects, keep an overview of several research lines at once, and learn how to support very different personalities and working styles.

Supervising PhD students is very different from supervising bachelor or master students. They are much more independent, they come with strong ideas and opinions, and they rightly expect guidance, not micromanagement. Learning how to adapt my communication and expectations to each person really pushed me to grow, both as a scientist and as a person.

That experience taught me how to manage people and projects, how to balance giving direction with giving freedom, and how to create an environment where others can do their best work. I think those skills will be invaluable in my next career step.

Was there a challenge or setback during your research that changed the way you approach science or problem-solving today?

One of the most formative setbacks for me was dealing with grant and fellowship rejections. I realised quite quickly that doing good science is one thing, but doing good science and communicating it well is something else entirely. In the current research environment, being able to secure funding is essential if you want to push your ideas and projects forward.

While preparing several fellowship applications, I learned how much depends on the way you present your work. It is not enough for the project to be technically solid. The story has to be clear, the wider relevance needs to be obvious, and the reviewers need to understand in a few pages why this is the right project at the right time with the right person behind it.

The rejections were frustrating at first, of course. But they forced me to think more critically about how I frame my research, how I connect it to bigger questions, and how I explain its impact beyond my own niche. They also taught me to separate my self-worth from the outcome of a single application and to see feedback and rejection as part of a longer learning process.

That experience changed the way I approach problems in general. I now think not only about whether something is scientifically sound, but also about how to make it understandable, convincing and attractive to people who do not live inside the same narrow topic every day.

What did you learn about work–life balance during your time here, and how do you hope to bring that into the next chapter of your career?

Already during my PhD I realised that overworking does not lead to better science. You can push through for a short time, but you do not do your best thinking when you are constantly exhausted. I am convinced that a focused eight-hour day can be much more productive than a twelve-hour day where you are just grinding, tired and distracted.

I took this mindset into my postdoc and tried to pass it on to the PhD students I supervised. Of course there are moments when research requires a short period of extra effort, for example just before a deadline or when a critical experiment finally becomes possible. But that should remain the exception, not the rule. When someone puts in extra hours, I encourage them to take that time back later instead of seeing permanent overtime as something heroic or expected.

I also try to be clear that I do not expect people to work weekends or late nights by default. I would much rather have a team that is rested, healthy and motivated than one that is constantly running on fumes. That is something I want to carry with me into the next chapter: creating or joining environments where working hard and having a life outside the lab can coexist in a healthy way.

How has your view of what it means to be a scientist evolved since you first joined the group?

When I started, I mainly associated being a scientist with doing experiments in the lab. The mental image was very hands-on: instruments, measurements, data and writing.

Over time, especially as a postdoc, my view shifted. Science for me is now less about personally doing every experiment and more about developing a clear vision, asking interesting questions and designing good strategies to answer them. It also means building and enabling a team, coordinating projects and resources, and creating the conditions for others to thrive scientifically.

Primary research skills remain essential. They are the foundation that allows you to judge whether an idea is realistic and whether data are trustworthy. But I have come to believe that what really drives science forward at a more senior level is a combination of curiosity, strategic thinking and good mentoring and management skills. Being a scientist is not only about being good in the lab; it is also about being a good listener, a good organiser and someone who helps others grow.

As you leave this stage behind, what perspective or insight would you like to share with those who are still in the middle of their PhD journey?

My main message would be: take care of yourself. No degree is more important than your health, whether physical or mental.

A PhD can be very stressful. There is pressure from deadlines, from experiments that do not work, from comparison with others and from your own expectations. Try not to add an extra layer of pressure by constantly telling yourself that you are not doing enough. Be kind to yourself and recognise that you are already working hard.

It is completely normal that nothing seems to work for long periods of time. That does not mean you are not good enough; it is simply part of how research works. You are learning, you are building skills and you are moving forward, even if day-to-day it does not always feel like it.

If you can, try to see your PhD less as a pass-or-fail test and more as a period of growth. You are not only producing a thesis; you are also learning how to think, how to handle uncertainty and how to recover from setbacks. In the end, things usually come together, just not always in the straight line you imagined at the beginning.

So look out for yourself, protect your health and remember that you are more than your latest result or paper.

As we look back on the past year, we’re proud of how much our team has grown — scientifically, professionally, and collaboratively. Across conferences, research stays, and new initiatives, our group showcased its work, expanded international connections, and strengthened its presence in the community.

A major highlight was the publication of our paper by Job, Guillaume, Daniel, and Tom, together with former PhD student Josephine de Meester and collaborators from Rouen (Chyrstal Lopes, Clément Brandel, Yohann Cartigny). Read it here!

Our research featured widely this year: at INCOME (Berlin), with invited lectures from Tom and Daniel and posters by Guillaume, Job, and Leon; at the 13th Crystal Forms Meeting (Bologna), with posters by Job (winner of the Best Poster Prize!), Daniel, Guillaume, Yihua, and Leon; at BCS13 (Leuven-Heverlee), with posters from nearly the whole team; at Young SRC Day (Brussels), where Chloé, Job, and Leon presented and Guillaume gave a talk; and at SCIRES (Zagreb), featuring Guillaume’s talk and Leon’s poster. We were also active in Montpellier (Job’s poster) and Tianjin (Ting’s conference participation).

Collaboration remained central to our year — from Yihua’s research stay in Bologna to Daniel’s involvement in GSO Leadership Academy 9, reinforcing our commitment to leadership and teamwork.

Here’s to another year of discovery, growth, and collaboration.