Congratulations to the spectroelectrochemistry team (unlike the BoostCrop team, no official website... but on its way!) for having their first paper accepted in Chemical Science. This is a novel demonstation of coupling a boron doped diamond electrode to study the ultrafast dynamics of an anthraquinone redox couple. Well done all!

Congratulations to team BoostCrop who have published their molecular photon-to-heater work in Chemical Science. The phenolic barbiturics developed in this work may provide a new source of solar photothermal materials that can be applied in agriculture to promote crop growth during cold snaps and sun protection.

In honour of black history month we had the opportunity to celebrate the contribution of the black community to Chemistry. As part of this, Tosin gave an excellent talk on his work regarding UV-filter candidates inspired by nature. Following this, two further talks were given. The first was given by Maria Kariuki of the Perrier group and included a discussion on the experience of being black in STEM fields followed by an introduction to Maria's work on supramolecular assemblies. The second talk discussed nanoscale electrical imaging for green applications and was given by Segun Wahab of the Warwick electrochemistry and interfaces group. All three talks together contributed to an excellent event!

The annual RSC Spectroscopy and Dynamics Group (SDG) Meeting was held at Warwick between the 6th and the 8th of January 2020. This was, as it always is, an excellent conference where the spectroscopy community gets to meet and share their recent discoveries. The legendary SDG quiz also took place after the conference dinner and included a practical round to keep the tradition for Warwick-led SDG quizes!