Congratulations to Warwick Chemistry Student Ambassador, Joe Crowther, who won the Unitemps Student Employee Outstanding Performance Award. Our Student Ambassadors play a key role hosting prospective students and their guests at Open Days, providing an insight into the course and life at Warwick, and leading tours of the Department and campus. Joe was nominated by the Chemistry Department Admissions Team for his dedication and commitment, noting positive feedback from visitors, and describing him as a “delight to work with” and “a great asset to the team and the University”. Joe and his Personal Tutor, Dr Gabriele Sosso, attended the awards evening held at Radcliffe Conference Centre on Thursday 20 June.

MAS student and Performance Athlete, Hannah Burnage, has been chosen as part of a national team of seven archers representing Great Britain in the World University Summer Games in Italy.

We are pleased to announce Ezat Khoshdel has been appointed as an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the department. Ezat has been a long-standing collaborator with the department with multiple projects over 25 years. Ezat has recently retired from Unilever where he was the inventor of over 150 patents, the largest number of any Unilever employee. Ezat will be more than happy to discuss ideas and work across the department and add to our impact activities. Ezat can be contacted on E.Khoshdel@warwick.ac.uk and will next be in the department on October 11^th when he gives a lecture to our new Polymer MSc cohort.

Congratulations to Sam Lawton who has just won this year's Young Persons' Lecture Competition.

Sponsored by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, with support from The Worshipful Company of Armourers & Brasiers, the Young Persons' Lecture Competition invites students and professionals up to the age of 28 to deliver a short lecture on a materials, minerals, mining, packaging, clay technology and wood science related subject.

There were three rounds to the competition: the regional heats, regional finals, and the national finals which took place on 25 April, and Sam wins a prize of £750 and a trip to South Africa to compete in the world finals.

Sam is a final year PhD student under the supervision of Prof Dave Haddleton, and is currently working on developing new materials for the next generation of solar cells.