2023 School of Chemistry Postgraduate Conference

The 2023 School of Chemistry Postgraduate Conference took place between 12 and 14 June.

It began with a postgraduate careers event, featuring presentations and networking by our sponsors. This was followed by oral presentations from the third year PhD students, and a poster session featuring second year students.

The presentations highlighted the wide scope and high quality of research in the School. They included: microscale and nanoscale carbon materials for applications in medicine and waste water treatment; the chemistry of the atmosphere on Earth, and on other planets; computer methods for designing and optimising new chemical processes for industry; and, new ways to study the structures of proteins, and design drug candidate molecules to interact with them.

The conference concluded with a plenary lecture by Professor Julie McPherson from the University of Warwick, about her conducting diamond materials for electrochemical sensing and catalysis applications. We were fortunate to host Julie so soon after her award of this year’s Royal Society of Chemistry Tilden prize.

Prizes for the best talks and poster presentations were voted for by the students and staff. The prize winners from left to right are: Darcey Ridgeway-Brown, Jacob Webb, Rachel Bocking, Thomas Moore, Tom Dixon, Brian Ramogayana, Niamh Robertson and Raphael Stone (inset).

The conference was organised by Rachel Bocking and her colleagues on the Post-Graduate Student Committee, and the Director of Postgraduate Studies Malcolm Halcrow. We are very grateful to Avantor, C-Capture, Keracol, Lhasa, Merck, William Blythe and the Society of Chemical Industry for sponsoring the event.