Træf for Organisk Kemi-Studerende
Every 18 months, young chemists from all of Denmark gather for TOKS (“Træf for Organisk Kemi-Studerende”). The meeting is arranged for students, by students. This year TOKS will be hosted by the Department of Chemistry – Technical University of Denmark. It is our pleasure as students at the Department of Chemistry to host the event – TOKS XIX! Lectures, presentations, and discussions are held in a friendly, relaxed, and informal fashion that stimulates a creative and productive atmosphere. Not surprisingly, TOKS is a very popular event, offering a unique chance for exchanging ideas and broadening your network within the field of organic chemistry. In this respect, organic chemistry is broadly defined and covers topics such as organic synthesis, natural products, analysis, organometallics, peptide-, medicinal chemistry, spectroscopy, molecular modelling, and much more. TOKS routinely gathers 125+ chemistry students (BSc, MSc, PhD), as well as post docs, professors, and participants from industry. They come from Denmark and nearby areas, e.g. Aarhus University, Technical University of Denmark, University of Southern Denmark, Copenhagen University, but also from neraby international institutions such as Lund University. Academia apart, young chemists from industrial settings, such as H. Lundbeck A/S, Novo Nordisk A/S, LEO Pharma A/S, etc., also frequently participate for maintaining and nurturing their relations to the chemistry student community. TOKS XIX will be the nineteenth gathering since students at Aarhus University in 1994 opened the doors to the very first meeting for organic chemistry enthusiasts. The founders of the first TOKS were then-PhD students Kurt Gothelf and Mogens Johannsen. They envisioned a forum for students and post docs to meet, share experiences, and present their research in front of a larger audience. Thus, the first TOKS invitation read:“It is the idea to keep the arrangement in a relaxed atmosphere, where there is room for even trivial questions.”
Over the years, the style of TOKS has remained in this spirit of being relaxed and welcoming. Its popularity and high standards of presentations and discussions testifies that it indeed is an excellent recipe! Previous hosts: