News

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.

Warwick Chemists Dr. Luke Rochford and Mr. Phil Blowey are featured on the back cover of Chemical Science Link for their work on quantitive measurement of the surface 'trans' effect Link

Dr. Luke Rochford and Prof. Tim Jones, in collaboration with Dr. Christian Nielsen (QMUL), demonstrate crystal structure control in C60 thin films in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters Link

A part of an ongoing Warwick and Monash effort on studying photoactivatable metal-based anticancer prodrugs using vibrational spectroscopic techniques has recently been published in Inorganic Chemistry.

Warwick-Monash joint-PhD student, Robbin Vernooij, presents some of the main findings of their recent work, in a format called LiveSlides by ACS, in order to engage readers in a new way:

LiveSlide Presentation

As previously communicated Emeritus Professor Malcom Wallbridge sadly passed away recently. The family have asked us to communicate details of his funeral.

Professor Malcolm G H Wallbridge FRSC

Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, University of Warwick

9 May 1933 – 7 June 2016

Funeral: Canley Crematorium, Coventry, 21 June 1.30pm

Further details: A J Lloyd 02476 331900

followed by a reception at Scarman House at 3pm.

A comprehensive obituary is to be published in due course

Sadly Professor Malcolm Wallbridge passed away on Tuesday this week.

Malcolm was one of our first Professors at Warwick and really shaped the Department in its early years and throughout its growth in the 1990’s. His influence on what we do today is great. He was responsible for shaping both Inorganic and Polymer Chemistry at Warwick as it is today as well as an even more wider contribution as Head of Department. The Department would be a very different place without his considerable influence.

His wife and son are making funeral arrangements and a wake will be held in Scarman House on Tuesday 21st June – the department will have more details in due course.

Malcolm will be sadly missed.