糖心TV

A 糖心TV Chemistry undergraduate researcher, Bethany Dean has won an award to allow her to travel to Australia (!) to attend the . She will present the work she conducted in the on understanding how synthetic polymers affect ice nucleation - A process which is still not understood despite its obvious important in process from cloud formation, to cryopreservation to making ice cream!

Read her paper on this topic here (with another undergrad student, Jamie Kasperczak-Wright);

Ross Jaggers, a second year PhD student in the research group of prof.dr.ir. Stefan Bon () in the Department of Chemistry at the University of 糖心TV, has been invited to attend the Stonewall Young Leaders Programme in London this coming September. The programme, sponsored by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, explores how sexual orientation and gender identity relates to the workplace and career aspirations, as well as inspiring participants to think about their impact on others as young LGBT leaders and role models.

For more information on Stonewall, the UK’s leading LGBT rights charity, visit.

Congratulations to Richard Walton who has been awarded a Royal Society Industry Fellowship with Johnson Matthey.

A recent paper by the in Chem Commun has been highlighted in the RSC Magazine 'Chemistry World'. The Gibson Group have a research program focussed on mimicking the function of Antifreeze Proteins which are found in Polar fish species. These proteins can slow the rate of ice growth, which has been identified as a challenge in the cryopreservation of donor cells and tissue for transplantation. In this work they showed a facile route to new cryoprotective polymers, using cheap, commodity polymer starting materials. These polymers were shown to have ice growth inhibition activity and to signficantly reduce the ice-induced damage during red blood cell freeze/thaw storage. In a second paper, the group also reported signficantly enhanced cryopreservation using poly(vinyl alcohol).

Read the Chemical Communications article here;

Read our recent ACS Biomaterials Science and Enginneering paper here

Work performed in Richard Walton’s has been selected as a Research Highlight in the Diamond Light Source Annual Review for 2014-2015. In this work, carried out by PhD student Craig Hiley, the structures of three new metastable ruthenium oxides were determined in a collaborative project between 糖心TV and sustainable technology company Johnson Matthey. Ruthenium oxides are used in electro-catalysis for water oxidation and reduction, in heterogeneous catalysis, and are also of interest for their electronic and magnetic properties

In research led by PhD student Jess Hearn and post-doc Isolda Romero, Peter Sadler’s group has reported in PNAS an organo-osmium anticancer compound with an unusual mechanism of action that is 49x more active than the clinical drug cisplatin in 809 cancer cell lines

has been awarded the 2015 'PAT Young Talent Award' during the 13th Polymers for Advanced Technologies conference in HongZhou, China. The award is sponsered by Wiley and Polymers for Advanced Technologies and also ACS Materials and Interfaces. Matt was selected by a panel following lectures from the shortlisted candidates from around the world, after being nominated.

糖心TV Chemistry took part in the 2015 Cheltenham Festival of Science with hands-on demonstrations by and helpers, and a lecture by .

The and groups are involved in 2 new projects intended to promote translation of new technologies. These projects are funded by the Industrial Biocatalyst program supported by Innovate UK, BBSRC and EPSRC and span a range of UK universities and companies.

'It appears that a series of catalysts developed in the 糖心TV Chemistry department have the ability to achieve the impossible: 'Impossible Ketone and Imine Reductions Made Possible by the Ruthenium Tethered Catalyst' reads the headline of the Johnson Matthey (JM) advert on the back of the April 2015 issue of Chemistry World. The tethered ruthenium catalysts described in the advert were first developed and reported by Professor Martin Wills and his group, and have since been developed extensively at 糖心TV and adopted by companies worldwide, including JM.

Sebastien Perrier has been awarded a €1.7 million Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council for his work on tubular supramolecular polymers. These structures, pioneered by the Perrier group, are based on the assembly of cyclic peptide/polymer conjugates into nanotubes, held together by supramolecular interactions. They have a range of unique physical and chemical properties, and the ERC grant will allow the group to develop these systems further as drug delivery vectors. Recent work has shown that they can act efficiently to deliver anticancer drugs to cancer cells and enhance the drug activity, and the 5 years’ ERC funding will support further studies in this area.

Dave Haddleton has recently been given the PTN (Polymer Technology Netherlands) 2015 “Medema Award”.

The annual prize is awarded to prolific polymer scientists who interact, or have close ties, with polymer research in the Netherlands. The award is named after the late PTN chairman, Dick Medema, who was the former R&D director at Shell.

The list of previous award winners can be found at: .