A recent report has concluded that the experimental sciences of chemistry and physics are expensive to teach. When consulted about an increase in student:staff ratios, Alison Rodger noted that the students were not suffering but academic staff were all working much harder to ensure this.

For the full article see: http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/11/uk-chemistry-departments-spending-finances-deficit

An Angew. Chem. VIP from Lewandowski group investigates the influence of different intermolecular interactions on protein dynamics. The paper presents first ever extensive site-specific relaxation measurements on a large non-crystalline protein-antibody complex in a few nanomole quantities. The study paves the way for direct characterization of dynamics in biologically important but sensitivity-limited samples of proteins within large complexes.

Warwick Chemistry, Life Science and Medical School team up to make a new generation of readily self-assembled metallohelices kill cancer cells at very low concentration (40 nM) but have low toxicty to microbes, insects and healthy human cells.

Senior Teaching Fellow, Dr Paolo Coppo, has just been awarded the HEA Fellow status, which is the UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and learning support in higher education.

The Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) have awarded an Early Career Research Fellowship to Ross Hatton to develop electrodes for the emerging generation of photovoltaics (PVs)

Dr. Luke Rochford and Dr. Alex Ramadan from Prof Tim Jones' group, in collaboration with Dr. Sandrine Heutz (Imperial college london) and Prof. Phil Woodruff (Warwick Physics), publish a study of the formation of ordered heteroepitaxial organic films in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.

Ordered growth of vanadyl phthalocyanine (VOPc) on an iron phthalocyanine (FePc) monolayer

Congratulations to Dan Warr (Costantini group), winner of our annual Art and Photography Competition, with his entry "Molecular triangles".

A Warwick Chemistry undergraduate researcher, Bethany Dean has won an award to allow her to travel to Australia (!) to attend the ICUR undergraduate reserach conference . She will present the work she conducted in the GibsonGroup on understanding how synthetic polymers affect ice nucleation - A process which is still not understood despite its obvious important in process from cloud formation, to cryopreservation to making ice cream!

Read her paper on this topic here (with another undergrad student, Jamie Kasperczak-Wright);

Congdon, T., Dean, B.T., Kasperczak-Wright, J., Biggs, C.I., Notman, R., Gibson, M.I., 2015, Biomacromolecules, Probing the Biomimetic Ice Nucleation Inhibition Activity of Poly(vinyl alcohol) and Comparison to Synthetic and Biological Polymers

Ross Jaggers, a second year PhD student in the research group of prof.dr.ir. Stefan Bon (BonLab) in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick, has been invited to attend the Stonewall Young Leaders Programme in London this coming September. The programme, sponsored by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, explores how sexual orientation and gender identity relates to the workplace and career aspirations, as well as inspiring participants to think about their impact on others as young LGBT leaders and role models.

For more information on Stonewall, the UK’s leading LGBT rights charity, visitwww.stonewall.org.uk.

Dr Corinna Preuss has been awarded a Newton International Fellowship to conduct research at the University of Warwick’s Department of Chemistry.

Jointly run by The British Academy, The Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society, the Fellowship is for non-UK scientists who are at an early stage of their research career and provides the opportunity for the best early stage post-doctoral researchers from all over the world to work at UK research institutions for a period of two years.

Speaking after being awarded the Fellowship Dr Preuss said:

“I’m very honoured and delighted to be awarded the Newton International Fellowship. Not only will it support my personal development but is also emphasises the novelty and importance of our proposed research project.”

Dr Preuss will work as part of a team led by Professor Stefan Bon to mimic the motional behaviour of zooplankton by fabricating artificial jelly-objects that have the capability to transform shape, swim, and – as an additional feature – release payloads. Dr Preuss says these hydrogel objects will have these three pre-programmed functions “which can be triggered on demand in a controlled fashion”. For this purpose, recent scientific advances in polymer and colloid chemistry will be merged with soft matter physics and robotics in order to create a promising and interdisciplinary research program

Further to the research with Professor Bon, Dr Preuss is keen to use the Fellowship to teach undergraduate chemists and to create a network with other fellow scientists, saying that: “In my opinion, exchanging knowledge and listening to different opinions is essential for the formation of a highly efficient scientific society”.

Discussing why she chose the University of Warwick Dr Preuss said:

“I met Professor Stefan Bon during a conference in Mexico. I was impressed by his research and the passion he presented it with. Later on, whilst I was presenting my research at the poster session, we got the chance to chat more and discovered that our interests in each other’s research would create a promising base for a further collaboration. In working with Stefan and coming to the University of Warwick, I’m taking the chance of changing my field of research to colloidal chemistry and engineering, which provides a new, challenging and fascinating area for me”.

2 September 2015

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Congratulations to Richard Walton who has been awarded a Royal Society Industry Fellowship with Johnson Matthey.