School of Chemistry’s 2026 Postgraduate Conference celebrates student successes

With another academic year ending, the School of Chemistry has once again celebrated postgraduate student excellence with its annual award ceremony.

The 2026 School of Chemistry Postgraduate Conference, which took place on the 9-10 Jun, featured oral presentations from third-year PhD students and posters by second-year students, highlighting the wide scope and high quality of the research in the School.

Discussions spanned the full range of chemistry, including flow reactors for heterogeneous catalysis; on-the-fly measurements of catalytic reactions and their optimisation with machine learning; the chemical biology of microbial drug resistance; and measurements of air quality in the laboratory and Atlantic atmosphere.

The event concluded with a plenary lecture by Dr James Birrell from the University of Essex. Dr Birrell presented his work on the structure and mechanism of enzymes involved in anaerobic respiration, including iron hydrogenases. A week later, the annual staff-student ball followed.

Prizes for the best talks and poster presentations were voted for by the students and staff. The Kate Furneaux prize was also awarded, which is given to PhD students making a notable contribution to the non-academic life of the School.

The conference was organised by Diana Gaman and her colleagues on the Postgraduate Student Committee, and Director of Postgraduate Studies Professor Malcolm Halcrow. The School of Chemistry is very grateful to the Royal Society of Chemistry for sponsoring the event, while book tokens and cash prizes were donated by the RSC journals Reaction Chemistry and Engineering, Molecular Systems Design and Engineering, Catalysis Science and Technology, and RSC Advances.

Best talk first prize

• Thomas French

Best talk second prizes

• Sophie Graham
• Eve Loughlan

Best poster first prize

• Qi You

Best poster second prizes

• Homa Basiri
• Schaumiya Suresh

Kate Furneaux prizes

• Ben Fenton
• Diana Gaman

Further information

• Image caption: From left to right, the prize winners were Sophie Graham (inset), Thomas French, Eve Loughlan, Diana Gaman, Ben Fenton, Qi You, Schaumiya Suresh, and Homa Basiri.