News Archive

The Chemistry Department held its first One-day Postgraduate Research Symposium this week.  The event provided the Department's research students the opportunity to showcase the exciting, cutting-edge science that they are all undertaking as a part of their PhD studies.  The day opened with three parallel talk sessions where each of the Department's final year students gave a 15 minute oral presentation in a conference-style format, which was supported by a very lively question and answer session after each talk.  This was followed by a very animated, colourful, and enjoyable poster session (no doubt helped, in part, by a few glasses of wine!) during which all of the Department's second year PhD students very eloquently presented and defended their research to other students and members of staff.

Throughout the symposium the level of presentation and science that was showcased was truly outstanding, with staff and students alike agreeing that it would be very hard to go to an international conference where the standard of presentation and of science was as good!  As a result, it was an unenviably hard task for the talk and poster judges to pick out particular winners from the day's events since the level of science and quality of the talks and posters was so uniformly high.  However, following extensive debate the following six students were very narrowly awarded prizes at the end of the day by the Department's head, Prof. John Evans:

James Walton "Novel Ligands for Eu(III)-sensitised Emission"

Kathryn Moss "Spanning the Spectrum: Enhancing Charge Transfer Emission from Donor-Acceptor Co-Oligomers and -Polymers"

Andy McKeague "Holographic Particle Image Velocimetry of Jets, Drops and Capillaries"

1st Prize - Daniel Horke "Ultrafast Relaxation Dynamics of Electron Acceptor Radical Anions"

2nd Prize - Helen Mason "Chromic Properties of Anils"

3rd Prize - Robert Edkins "The Synthesis and Photophysics of tris-Heteroleptic Cyclometallated Iridium Complexes"

Overall, this was a fascinating and enjoyable day of Chemistry, which has certainly set the bar very high for next year's event!

The Department would like to thank Asynt, Sigma-Aldrich, and Procter & Gamble for their generous sponsorship of the event.