Warwick University hosted the annual Diamond Conference sponsored by De Beers, celebrating the 66th year of the conference. The conference ran from thre 6th to the 9th of July with delegates attending from all over the globe. Lectures covered a wide variety of different diamond research areas including electrochemical applications, nanodiamond, gemmology, quantum technologies, CVD growth, as well as diamond devices and applications.

Several members of the research group presented posters about their diamond research. Congratulations to Zoe Ayres who won the Student poster prize on her research into the development of diamond pH sensor technology.

The "Diamond Team" of WEIG (those that are investigating the uses of diamond for electrochemical applications) were invited to conduct an exhibition at the Science Lates evening at the Science Museum on the 24th of June. Science Lates is an event for the general public to investigate the "next big thing" in science.

The group had a range of activities organised to teach about the properties of diamond, including:

general knowledge (a quiz based challenge);

the structure of diamond (having a try at building an atomistic model);

the thermal conductivity of diamond (trying to cut ice with different materials, including diamond);

learning about the pressure required to make diamond using HPHT (strongman, test your strength) and how doping diamond makes it conductive (connecting circuits with insulating and boron doped diamond).

Everyone had a great time, and it was clear that many people went away learning that diamond is not just a gemstone!

Thank you to all those involved!

On Monday the 22nd of June, the Midlands Electrochemistry Group annual meeting was held at Warwick. MEG allows PhD electrochemists from different research groups across the Midlands to do talks and present posters to their peers in a friendly conference environment.

Prizes won by the group included best poster won by both Tania and Maria, along with Minkyung recieving the runner up poster prize. Sze and Lingcong got second and third prizes for their talks respectively.

Plenary talks were given by Professor Alan Bond and Dr Jie Zhang. Thank you to the event sponsors: Uniscan Instruments, Alvatek, Metrohm, IJ Cambria, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the International Society of Electrochemistry.

On 20th June, the group were invited to Pat's house and gig at Birdingbury Club to witness the legendary Papa Roro play! Papa Roro, fronted by our very own Professor Patrick Unwin also contains several other members of WEIG, Rob Channon and Alexander Parker. Everyone who attended had a wonderful time!

On Sunday 14 th of June, a record number of groups members of WEIG (Pat, Aleix, Dmitry, Jenny, Rob C, Rob L, Josh,Dmitry, Liz, Faduma, Minkyung, Andrew, Ashley and David) fought it out to complete a 10 kilometre run from Warwick castle to Kenilworth castle. The Two Castles run is a WEIG tradition, with the group having taken part in the race for the past 7 years. There was huge anticipation as to who in the group would cross the finish line first, and in the end it was Pat that raced through to victory!

Congratulations to all those that participated, for their commitment and dedication to the race. We now look forward to next year's event, and to see if anyone can beat Pat...