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Department of Chemistry

News

Chemistry department ranked 3rd in UK

Our chemistry department has retained its high ranking in the Independent Complete University Guide for 2014. 

The 2014 rankings are at: 

http://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings?s=Chemistry

(13 May 2013)

Outreach in China

Prof John Evans and Dr Ivana Evans have recently spent 10 days in China visiting university and industrial partners where we have strong teaching and research links. 


During the trip they also visited Harrow School Beijing where John gave a lecture to A-level students about modern chemical research and how it relates to material on the A-level curriculum. The students contributed through a team demonstration of the kind of phonon modes that can lead to unusual physical properties in materials. 


(30 Apr 2013) » More about Outreach in China

Teaching Excellence Award for Jacquie Robson

Congratulations to Jacquie Robson who has been awarded a Durham University “Excellence in Learning and Teaching” award for her work in the department. Jacquie has developed a number of new activities and experiments for the first year laboratory course as part of the RELITE project, and she recently worked with the team that devised new induction processes for first year students. She is the department mentor for new first year students and works closely with students needing assistance in making the transition from school to university studies.

(26 Apr 2013)

Double Success for Durham Chemists with Prestigious Fellowships

Dr Stephen Butler

Two Durham University Chemists have gained prestigious Ramsay Fellowships.

Dr Stephen Butler, a post-doctoral researcher in Durham was educated at Warwick and Sydney Universities before moving to Durham in 2011 to work with Prof David Parker FRS in the Chemistry Department. He plans to explore the selective recognition of phosphate species in solution using optical methods.

Dr Gareth Roberts obtained his PhD from Durham University in 2010 and was the first PhD student to work with Dr Jan Verlet in the Chemistry Department. He is currently working at Warwick University and will take up his Fellowship in Bristol, examining ultrafast laser dynamics studies of DNA base pairs.

(3 Apr 2013) » More about Double Success for Durham Chemists with Prestigious Fellowships

Industrial Fellowship for Chris Greenwell

Congratulations to Dr Chris Greenwell who has been awarded a Royal Society Industry Fellowship to understand how clay minerals and clay mineral/other mineral interfaces hydrate during drilling and fracking operations. The Fellowship will last for 4 years and Chris will spend 50% of his time working with M-I SWACO (Schlumberger) on the project, making use of the world class Aberdeen Research & Technology Centre.

(3 Apr 2013) » More about Industrial Fellowship for Chris Greenwell

Welcome to Mark Miller

A warm welcome to Dr Mark Miller who is a Senior Lecturer at our department. Mark’s research interests include the simulation of soft condensed matter, self assembly, molecular and colloidal clusters and network-forming fluids; see

http://www.dur.ac.uk/chemistry/staff/profile/?id=11538

Mark willl be closely associated with Durham’s Institute for Advanced Research Computing.

(3 Apr 2013)

Prof Geoffrey Coates

Prof. Geoffrey Coates (1917–2013), who was head of Department from 1953 until 1968, passed away on 10th January. Prof Coates made enormous contributions to the Department and University during his time in Durham. He reinvigorated Durham Chemistry helping design and establish us in a then state-of-the-art building. His activities and the people he hired set the foundations for the modern Department. His monograph on organometallic compounds (Methuen, 1956) outlined the principles of the rapidly developing subject so effectively that it was followed by a second and then further substantial multi-author editions. Many of us first learnt organometallic chemistry from his texts.

(21 Feb 2013) » More about Prof Geoffrey Coates

Organic Light Award

Congratulations to Martin Bryce (Chemistry) and Andy Monkman (Physics) for a large grant award from EPSRC on high performance fluorescent devices from E-type triplet harvesting. This grant will fund two PDRAs (one based in Chemistry, one based in Physics) each for 3 years. The work will involve the synthesis of new materials, photophysical studies and device fabrication. The aim is to develop new strategies to achieve high performance organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) and low energy organic solid-state lighting.

(28 Jan 2013) » More about Organic Light Award

Raman spectroscopy grant for Simon Beaumont

Congratulations to Simon Beaumont who was awarded EPSRC support for his ‘CataRaman’ project under the EPSRC First Grant scheme. The project will be focused on exploiting Total Internal Reflection (TIR) Raman spectroscopy for in situ studies of heterogeneous catalysis. This methodology, which offers a number of advantages over current alternatives, will be exploited for the first time to study reactive adsorbates under true operating conditions on specially prepared, well defined nanoparticle catalysts. 

(27 Dec 2012)