News

New volumes in the Inorganic Materials Book Series, co-edited by Richard Walton, have been published by Wiley. The latest three volumes focus on characterisation methods: Local Structural Characterisation, Multi Length-Scale Characterisation and Structure from Diffraction Methods. The books have been edited with Duncan Bruce (York) and Dermot O’Hare (Oxford) and contain contributions from an international set of expert authors.

Applications are invited for fully-funded studentships at the new Molecular Analytical Sciences (MAS) Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT)

MAS offers a four year degree programme (MSc + PhD) in Multidisciplinary Science which aims to develop new techniques and methodologies and apply them in creative ways to solve real-world problems. The disciplines covered include chemistry, physics, statistics, mathematics, biology, engineering and computer science. Candidates with a first degree in any of these subjects are invited to apply.

Congratulations to Dr Paul Taylor (Chemistry and IATL), Nick Barker (Chemistry) and Paul Blagburn (Student Admissions and Recruitment) who have successfully secured £150,000 from the Royal Society of Chemistry’s National Widening Participation (WP) programme ‘Chemistry for All’. Competition for these awards was fierce and Warwick was one of just four institutions, out of sixteen, to receive funding.

Many congratulations to Rod Wesson who has been awarded HEA STEM Technician of the Year Award! The winners of the Higher Education Academy STEM Technicians of the Year awards were announced at the HEA STEM annual conference on 30 April at the University of Edinburgh. Professor Iain Stewart, Professor of Geoscience Communication at University of Plymouth, and presenter of the BBC series Earth, presented the awards.

Dr Andrew Dove has been named the Royal Society of Chemistry Gibson-Fawcett Award winner for 2014. The award recognises “original and independent contributions to materials chemistry”.

Caroline Biggs in the GibsonGroup won the prize for best poster presentation at the 13th European Summer Course on Glycosciences. Her winning poster was entitled 'Polymer Functionalised Surfaces for Microarray Applications'.

The group of Richard Walton have this week published a paper in Angewandte Chemie describing a new synthesis approach to oxides of ruthenium, including new structures, and materials with unusual magnetic properties. The work was performed by PhD student Craig Hiley in collaboration with industrial partner Johnson Matthey, as part of an ongoing study into the chemistry of precious-metal containing materials.

“Ruthenium (V) Oxides from Low Temperature Hydrothermal Synthesis” C.I. Hiley, M.R. Lees, J.M. Fisher, D. Thompsett, S. Agrestini, R.I. Smith and R.I. Walton, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 53 (2014) 4423–4427, April 22, 2014

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201310110/abstract

Congratulations to Rhiann Andrew, a second year PhD student in the Chaplin Group, who was awarded the RSC Metallomics Poster Prize at the Dalton 2014 conference for her work on NHC-based Rhodium Macrocycles.

Many congratulations to James Silk, an MChem with Industrial Training student, who has been awarded a Salters' Graduate Prize 2014, one of only 5 awarded to Chemistry students nationally.

His personal tutor, Peter Scott said, "James is an outstanding scientist, excelling in all subjects, but he seems to have a real feel for synthetic chemistry. His experimental work is impeccable, his writing is insightful and his motivation levels are truly inspiring. One to watch."

Former Warwick Chemistry researcher Dr Suzanne Dilly will, it was announced today, lead a new company ValiSeek Limited, a risk-sharing joint venture company between Tangent Reprofiling Limited, a member of the SEEK group, and ValiRx Plc, the life science company with a focus on cancer diagnostics and therapeutics for personalised medicine. ValiSeek has acquired a worldwide exclusive licence from Tangent to progress the drug VAL401, discovery of which was aided by Warwick Chemistry’s Magic Tag® technology, through its remaining preclinical development and towards Phase II trials for the treatment of lung cancer and other oncology indications.

Many congratulations to Professor Peter Sadler, FRS who has been appointed by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council as an EPSRC RISE Fellow. The RISE scheme is aimed at Recognising Inspirational Scientists and Engineers working in the UK. The full press release can be found at: http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2014/Pages/riseawards.aspx

The GibsonGroup describe glycopolymers that selectively target the Cholera toxin and may provide a non-antibiotic tool to combat infectious diseases