Many congratulations go to Tania Read for passing her viva and completing her PhD on the 3rd August 2016. We all wish her good luck for the future in her new job at Vivoplex designing wearable fertility sensors.

Following on from the success of her talk at the Midlands Electrochemistry Group Conference, Zoe Ayres takes the top spot again by winning the prize for Best Talk at the Diamond Conference 2016.

Zoe's two-times prize-winning talk is based on the development of her all-diamond pH sensor, and how it can be used in extreme environments. Congratulations Zoe!

From Monday 4th to Sunday 10th July, The Royal Society in London opened its doors to the public as it hosted a Summer Science Exhibition, a week-long free festival of visionary science and technology. The diamond groups at Warwick, along with other institutions, put on an exhibit there entitled "Diamond: More Than Just A Gemstone", which showcased the fantastic properties of diamond other than looking great in jewellery, and promoted its potential as a material for a variety of scientific and engineering applications.

Researchers from Warwick Electrochemistry's diamond group demonstrated the "ice trick" which utilises the thermal properties of diamond, and also a light up electrode stand where visitors could test for themselves the electrical conductivity of boron doped diamond. Warwick Physics's diamond group put together a stand exploring the quantum properties of diamond and the influence of magnetic fields over it. Finally, the team at Aberystwyth University built a glowing LED model of diamond and used it to explain how diamond can be grown in the lab and how different dopants affect its properties. We also had representatives from Cardiff University, University of Bristol, and Element Six on the stand throughout the week.

Over the course of the week, around 15,000 visitors passed through the doors, and our team was noted as always being extremely enthusiastic. Visitors ranged from small children to Nobel prize winners, and we received great reviews from everyone - as could be seen from the popularity of the stand, particularly the ice demonstration! Well done to everyone who took part, for making this event a huge success!

It's conference season, and WEIG are taking it as an opportunity to snatch up all the prizes!

May 25th saw the Midlands Electrochemistry Group (MEG) 2016 Conference, gratefully hosted by the University of Leicester. Representing WEIG were Ashley Page, talking about multifunctional scanning for cellular uptake, Zoe Ayres and her diamond pH sensor, and Minkyung Kang discussing single nanoparticle electrochemistry. Also there were electrochemistry groups from Loughborough, Birmingham and Nottingham. But it was Warwick who came out on top, as Zoe won the prize for Best Talk and Lingcong Meng won the award for Best Poster.

June 1st was the Chemistry Department Postgraduate Research Symposium, Warwick's in-house conference. Here we had Maria Adobes Vidal discussing the dissolution of L-cystine crystals, David Perry talking about surface charge mapping, Faduma Maddar modelling the dissolution of pharmaceutical actives, and Minkyung showcasing her talk again. This time, Ashley was runner-up for the award for Best Poster, while Maria was the runner-up for Best Talk.

Well done everyone!

Everyone in WEIG would like to say goodbye to our postdoc Dr. Dmitry Momotenko, who is unfortunately leaving us after spending almost 3 years here. We'll all miss him and wish him the best for the future!