Hearty congratulations to Tahani and Kate for successfully defending their PhD thesis. They both emerged from their vivas with minor corrections - and, together with the group, they celebrated their distinguished accomplishments.

Tahani Bawazeer has now returned back to her home country, Saudi Arabia, as an Associate Professor at Umm Al-Qura University and Kate Meadows is going on to study Medicine at Cambridge University.

The group took part at the annual MEG meeting held in the School of Chemistry, University of Nottingham on the 17^th of April. 37 members of the group were there and four of our 2^nd & 3^rd year PhD students gave oral presentations on their work:

• Rob Lazenby on ‘New Developments in Intermittent Contact-Scanning Electrochemical Microscopy: Nanoscale Imaging and Hopping Mode'
• Paul Kirkman on ‘Localised diazonium modification of sp2 carbon surfaces through high-resolution electrochemistry’
• Changhui Chen on ‘Pseudo-single crystal electrochemistry on polycrystalline electrodes: Visualizing single grain activity for Fe^2+/3+ and oxygen reduction reaction’
• Jon Newland on ‘Investigation of Molecular Partitioning Between Oil Droplets and Aqueous Solution using Double Potential Step Chronoamperometry’

Paul was a well deserved runner up and all our group's talks were of a high standard - so well done to all four presenters. After the meeting the group went on a 'Trip to Jerusalem'…England’s oldest Inn located at the foot of Nottingham castle for a great meal and the finest real ales in town.

A special thanks to Rob Lazenby who organised the trip to Nottingham, and to Max Joseph and Alexander 'Parky' Parker, our very own mini bus drivers.

The electrochemistry group celebrated one more successful viva! Kim McKelvey who is originally from New Zealand deserves many congratulations or whakamihi (as the indigenous NZ people would say). Kim was part of the MOAC Doctoral Training Centre and is now a PDRA in the group. His thesis was focused on the development of electrochemical imaging techniques for biophysical applications. Kim’s PhD viva with Prof David Klenerman (University of Cambridge) and Vas Stavros (Warwick) was completed in the record time of approximately 1 hour and 15 min.

So very well done Kim and we hope you enjoy the NZ vs. Australia cricket match for the ICC Champions trophy.

Our group has scored what's called in the American baseball jargon a 'home run' after publishing four studies in the Journal of American Chemical Society (JACS) in less than four months. The four papers demonstrate the versatility of the scanning electrochemical cell microscopy (SECCM) technique developed in this group, which can be applied to various aspects of research; from probing facets and grain boundaries of pseudo-single-crystal polycrystalline electrodes to nanoscale patterning, and landing single-nanoparticles on surfaces to study catalysis.

For further details click the paper titles below:

• Pseudo-Single-Crystal Electrochemistry on Polycrystalline Electrodes: Visualizing Activity at Grains and Grain Boundaries on Platinum for the Fe2+/Fe3+ Redox Reaction
• Nanoscale Electrochemical Patterning Reveals the Active Sites for Catechol Oxidation at Graphite Surfaces
• A New View of Electrochemistry at Highly Oriented Pyrolytic Graphite
• Landing and Catalytic Characterization of Individual Nanoparticles on Electrode Surfaces

On February 17^th-21^st, Robert Lazenby, Marc Baghdadi and Prof Pat Unwin went to the 7^th workshop on scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) and related techniques. The conference was held in Ein-Gedi, Israel and led by Prof. Daniel Mandler (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem).

Marc presented his work as a poster (Scanning Ion Conductance Microscopy as a Probe of Localized Fluxes in Live Cell Imaging). Robert presented a talk covering recent work using nanoelectrodes and hopping mode imaging for Intermittent Contact-SECM (New Developments in Intermittent Contact-SECM: Nanoscale Imaging and Hopping Mode). Pat presented a talk demonstrating the use of Scanning Electrochemical Cell Microscopy (SECCM) for electrochemical imaging of heterogeneous electrode surfaces at nanoscale resolution (Scanning Electrochemical Cell Microscopy: New Features in Electrochemistry at the Nanoscale).

Whilst in Israel, they went into the Dead Sea, had a mud bath and sulfur shower, hiked through the Ein Gedi nature reserve and visited the ancient fortification of Masada.