News

Nick Barker received the ‘highly commended’ award for Community Contribution in the Warwick Staff Awards Ceremony on Friday night. The evening was an opportunity to celebrate the outstanding contributions and successes of staff from across the University.

Researchers from the University of Warwick’s Chemistry department use their skills to analyse crystals with life changing applications. Their work helps to improve the composition of drugs, improve fungicides, enhance drug development and benefit industry.

Emma Ravenhill, Faduma Maddar, Harriet Pearce and Maria Adobes-Vidal share a passion for chemistry and crystals. With International Women’s Day fast approaching on 8^th March they want to share and celebrate the contributions women make to chemistry in today's world. They are part of the Electrochemistry Group at Warwick University, which is composed of 45% women, with the Head of the Department of Chemistry Professor Alison Rodger also being a woman.

Known on campus as ‘The Crystal Crew’ the chemists use state-of-the-art microscopes and instruments to assist their research into crystals. The images they produce, as well as contributing to the frontiers of research, reveal the innards of a strange and beautiful micro-world, hidden from ordinary sight. ‘The Crystal Crew’ have been working with an artist in residence on a project called ‘drawing on the nanoscale’ using high resolution probe microscopes to allow the chemists to express a different side to their creativity.

Artist in residence at the University of Warwick’s Chemistry department, Mary Courtney said, "It is not like the old days when women were excluded from the Chemistry world. If we were to look into the crystal ball we would see more women rising to top positions as the future for Chemistry".

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

We are delighted to be able to pass on news of the arrival of our newest member.

Congratulations to Andrew Dove and Rachel O'Reilly on the arrival of their Daughter Matilda Ann Dove. Born this week weighing 8lb 12oz

On Sunday, Dave Haddleton was presented with an award for “recognition of outstanding service and contribution to the Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing” at the RSC Editors Symposium banquet at the Guildhall in London. The award was given for service on the Board of “Chem Comm”, and for being Editor in Chief – and launching – “Polymer Chemistry”.

Alistair Irvine joined the MOAC Doctoral Training Centre in 2004 and was a valued member of MOAC doing his PhD under the supervision of Claudia Blindauer and Robert Freedman. Today we received the sad news that he died last weekend. His death is a real loss to our widely flung community.

Collaborative work from the groups of Chaplin, Unwin, Rourke, and Wedge (Warwick physics) exploring the organometallic chemistry of paramagnetic complexes of palladium(I) and platinum(I) has been published in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 

Collaborative research with Warwick Medical School and UHCW NHS Trust reveals new clues to widely prescribed therapeutics' actions in body. Simvastatin sodium salt and fluvastatin interact with human gap junction gamma-3 protein in PLOS ONE Press coverage in Health Spectator.

Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, held a Symposium on 23-25 November 2015 to celebrate Peter Sadler’s achievements in biological and medicinal inorganic chemistry.

A Jones Group, Bon Group, Warwick Physics and Imperial College London collaboration published in JPCC shows that local chemical termination variations in copper iodide produces polymorphism in metal-free phthalocyanine thin films.

The Jones group, in collaboration with the McCulloch group (Imperial College London), publish a study of epitaxial growth of an organic semiconductor on a metal surface in RSC Advances

Collaborative work involving Lewandowski group was published in PNAS. The study led P. van der Wel (U. Pittsburgh) provides insights on structure and formation mechanism for huntingtin exon 1 fibrils implicated in Hungtington disease. Read more here.

The GibsonGroup's latest research into the use of biomaterials to increase the availability of donor cells has been published in Angewandte Chemie. Donor cells (e.g blood, bone marrow) are crucial to modern healthcare but due to their short shelf life they must be frozen using organic solvents as 'antifreezes'. The Gibson group has pionnered the use of synthetic polymers which inhibit ice crystal growth and their application to cryopreservation. In this work, a collaboraiton with Prof. Steve Armes at Sheffield, the team used biomimetic block copolymer micelles to provide a hydrated 'matrix' around the cells, which in combination with ice inhibiting polymers enable succesful cryopreservation of red blood cells. This is the first example of a cryopreservation system using entirely synthetic polymer materials, providing control and additional functionality into the system. Post-thawing, the micelles warm up, and become 'worm-like' which enabled the direct formation of a hydrogel, which is of interest for tissue engineering.

Read the paper here

Combining Biomimetic Block Copolymer Worms with an Ice-Inhibiting Polymer for the Solvent-Free Cryopreservation of Red Blood Cells