News

Warwick is privileged to attract high fliers. To reward hard work and promote outstanding achievement in Chemistry, we are proud to offer scholarships of up to £1000 for our top performing students. These are available to every UK and EU student that chooses us as their first choice and achieves A* at A Level Chemistry, or 7 in higher Level Chemistry, and excels in their other subjects too.

If you have any questions about scholarships or any aspects of Chemistry at Warwick please contact us at chem-undergraduate@warwick.ac.uk or on +44 (0)24 7652 3678

and we’ll be happy to help.

I am pleased to be able to write to you with the news that we have appointed Professor Mike Ward from the University of Sheffield as Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and new Head of Department from 1^st August 2017 (https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/chemistry/staff/profiles/michael_ward ). We are really looking forward to having Professor Ward with us. In the meantime, I will be taking over as interim Head of Department from the end of this term (from 10^th December). I would like to take this opportunity to thank Professor Alison Rodger for her leadership and hard work for over 20 years at Warwick and wish her all the best when she moves to Australia in the new year.

Martin Wills

Solar energy research by Hatton and Walton groups published in Nature Energy.

A breakthrough in solar power could make it cheaper and more commercially viable, thanks to research at the University of Warwick. For more information see the article attached.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/news/solar_power_could/

Collaborative work between the Blindauer group and the teams of Prof. Wladek Minor (University of Virginia), Dr Maksymilian Chruszcz (University of South Carolina) and Dr Alan Stewart (University of St. Andrews) has been highlighted in a press release entitled “Here’s How Your Body Transports Zinc to Protect Your Health“.

This relates to a recent joint publication which reports the first X-ray crystal structures of human and equine serum albumins bound to zinc. Serum albumin is the major carrier of zinc in the blood and is required for the effective systemic distribution of this essential nutrient. The new findings are published in the RSC journal Chemical Science. Full text of the open-access article is available here.

Congratulations to Professor Julie MacPherson who has been named on the 2016 Top 50 Women in Analytical Science Power List.

https://theanalyticalscientist.com/power-list/the-power-list-2016/

Dr Joanna Collingwood has been awarded a £418k grant at the September 2016 EPSRC Physical Sciences Panel. The three-year project includes Professor Peter Sadler and Professor Peter O’Connor from Warwick Chemistry as co-investigators (/pictured/). The award is made alongside an award of £338k to collaborator and Principal Investigator Dr Neil Telling at Keele University, for the joint project “Nanoscale metallomics and mineralization: advanced spectromicroscopy determination of the role of iron and calcium in Alzheimer's disease”. This project area became especially topical in the autumn when new research suggested that air pollution may cause the accumulation of iron oxide nanoparticles in the human brain, a question which made front-page news internationally, and on which Drs Collingwood and Telling were invited to comment:

http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-magnetite-air-pollution-and-alzheimers/

The EPSRC project grant will increase the impact that the team can deliver in this field, it ensures that Dr James Everett (currently a postdoctoral researcher in Dr Collingwood’s group in the School of

Engineering) can continue making a significant contribution in this specialist area, and it will support recruitment of an additional experienced postdoctoral researcher to the collaborator team. A summary of the project is available here:

http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/N033140/1

Congratulation to Samantha Roberts and her family on the slightly early but safe arrival of their baby boy. Introducing Daniel Roberts. We wish you all well.

Four Chemistry undergraduate students have been elected to participate in the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition. Hayden Tobin, Isobel Holden, Lorna Flintham and Robert Richardson will be completing a research based synthetic biology project as part of the multidisciplinary Warwick team.

Congratulations to Kay Doncom and Rebecca Williams from the O’Reilly group both won poster prizes at the Recent Appointees in Polymer Science meeting held at Loughborough University. Kay won first prize for her poster “Thermo-responsive properties of sulfobetaine-containing block copolymers” and Rebecca a runner-up prize for her poster “Cyclic vs. linear graft copolymers: Differences in particle morphology and thermoresponsive behaviour”. The conference is aimed at post-doctoral researchers and early career academics working in polymer science and also saw presentations from Warwick’s Paul Wilson (Chemistry) and Tara Schiller (WMG).

One of our AS:MIT students, Azzedine Dabo, has recently won a very prestigious prize.

He presented his work at an NMR conference called SMASH in San Diego, California and not only won a book raffle, but also the best poster presentation (only 3 people won it out of 72).

See below for more information:

SMASH Links:

http://www.smashnmr.org/presenters/posters

http://www.smashnmr.org/presenters/posters/poster-abstracts-list-author

Many congratulations!

Congratulations to everyone who has been offered a place to study at Warwick Chemistry in October 2016! Please see our enrolment pages for our essential checklist and information about what to do before you arrive. We’ll also be sending out Welcome Packs to all new starters, with an introduction from our award-winning ChemSoc and a summary of what to expect in your first few weeks at Warwick, so keep an eye out for yours.

We look forward to welcoming you all to Warwick in October. In the meantime, if you have any queries, please feel free to contact our UG Admissions Administrator, Lucy Brickwood.

Best wishes

Ann Dixon, Senior Admissions Tutor

Department of Chemistry

The Pattison Group have published the first Rh-catalysed arylation of fluorinated ketones in Chem Comm. Interestingly, we showed the difluorinated (CF₂H) ketone to be more reactive than the trifluoromethyl (CF₃) ketone, despite the fact each additional fluorine atom provides extra electronic activation.