News Library
Highlight of Diamond Science
Work performed in Richard Walton’s group has been selected as a Research Highlight in the Diamond Light Source Annual Review for 2014-2015. In this work, carried out by PhD student Craig Hiley, the structures of three new metastable ruthenium oxides were determined in a collaborative project between Warwick and sustainable technology company Johnson Matthey. Ruthenium oxides are used in electro-catalysis for water oxidation and reduction, in heterogeneous catalysis, and are also of interest for their electronic and magnetic properties
Abragam Prize for Lewandowski
Józef Lewandowski was awarded Anatole Abragam Prize of International Society of Magnetic Resonance "for his outstanding accomplishments to date and his promise in the development of solid-state NMR methodology and its application to the study of biomolecular structure and dynamics." The prize will be presented during ISMAR Conference in Shanghai.
Lewandowski in Science: Hierarchical protein dynamics
Józef Lewandowski in collaboration with Lyndon Emsley (EPFL, Lausanne/ENS-Lyon) and Martin Blackledge (IBS, Grenoble) reports in Science on a direct observation of hierarchy of protein and solvent motions in protein conformational energy landscape. The findings of the study employing a series of variable temperature magic angle spinning multinuclear NMR relaxation measurements on a nanocrystalline protein reconcile divergent interpretations from techniques that are individually sensitive to dynamic phenomena occurring on different time scales and at different locations in protein-solvent systems. Read more in Science.
Double win in RSC Analytical Poster Competition
Zoe Ayres and Sarah-Jane Richards (from Electrochemistry and Gibson Groups) won the main and runner up prizes in the first #RSCAnalyticalPoster competition. The competition was entirely based on twitter, with the aim of creating a poster, which succinctly summarised an application or method in analytial science. The competition attracted signficant interest with > 1k tweets, to an audience >300k and >1 million impressions.
Sarah-Jane won the main prize with her poster 'Cholera and Sugars' and Zoe a runner-up prize with her poster using diamond electrochemical Sensors.
Matt Gibson Awarded Dextra Medal
Dr Matthew Gibson has been awarded the RSC/Dextra Medal for Carbohydrate Science. This award, which is sponsored by Dextra Laboratories, was founded in 1970. It is presented to a scientist in the early/mid stage of their career for meritorious work in carbohydrate chemistry that has largely been conducted in the UK.
Matt will present a lecture, and recieve the medal at the joint RSc/COST MultiglycoNano Meeting in Bangor, Wales, in April.
To read more about the GibsonGroup's research visit their webpage.
5 Million in ERC grants Awarded
3 Academics in the Department have been awarded prestigious ERC starting grants with a total value of almost €5 million. Set up in 2007 by the EU, the European Research Council (ERC) is the first pan-European funding organisation for frontier research. It aims to stimulate scientific excellence in Europe by encouraging competition for funding between the very best, creative researchers of any nationality and age.
Dr Adrian Chaplin will develop new synthetic methodology for studying the interaction of alkanes with transition metals.
Dr Matthew Gibson will study mimics of antifreeze (glyco)proteins with the aim of improving cell cryopreservation.
Dr Józef Lewandowski will develop and apply approaches to investigate structural dynamics of large protein complexes by solid- and solution-state NMR.
These awards bring the total number of ERC-funded researches in the Department to 8, a clear testament to the internationally-leading nature of the research environment at Warwick.
A new type of anomalous coarsening
In a recent ACS Nano paper, the Costantini and Jones groups report on a novel 2D molecular assembly mode driven by charge transfer at the metal-organic interface.
Lewandowski group in JACS Spotlights
Lewandowski group in collaboration with Grzesiek (Basel, Switzerland) and Samoson (Tallinn, Estonia) groups has introduced a new solid-state NMR based approach that enables quantitative structural and dynamics studies of large protein complexes in a few nanomole quantities. This manuscript signifying a dawn of new era for high resolution NMR studies of large protein complexes has been featured in JACS Spotlights. Read the article in JACS.
GibsonGroup on cover of Biomaterials Science
The GibsonGroup's recent work on antifreeze-protein mimics has been highlighted on the front cover of RSC Biomaterials Science. http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2014/bm/c4bm00153b#!divAbstract
Chevening Scholarships for Masters Program Deadline
The Chevening scholarships support excellent international students for postgraduate study at UK universities.Interested candidates should consult the webpages of our renowned taught masters programmes and contact the course directors as soon as possible.
Deadline is 15th November.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/chemistry/gstudy/postgraduatedegrees/as_mit/
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/chemistry/gstudy/postgraduatedegrees/polymchem/
JACS Spotlight for guanosine hydrogels
Supramolecular guanosine-borate hydrogels have been made and characterised in a collaboration led by Jeff Davis (University of Maryland) with Andrew Marsh (Chemistry) and Steven Brown (Physics). The physiologically compatible gels, published in Journal of the American Chemical Society are featured in a Spotlight article. Lead author Gretchen Peters and Jeff Davis will visit Warwick again, 17-21 November to further explore applications of the materials.
Colon cancer; peptide-mimetic metal helices
Helical arrays of small organic molecules around a core of Fe(II) ions act as highly potent and highly selective anticancer compounds. The work is published in Nature Chemistry.