Cardiff School of Chemistry

Nick Tomkinson from the School of Chemistry has been awarded £1.6M from the EPSRC with additional support of up to £1.3M from GlaxoSmithKline to develop selective molecular tool compounds for use in the discovery of innovative molecular targets for respiratory disease.

Professor Graham Hutchings has been appointed as the new chair of the UK’s Science Community Representing Education (SCORE).

Professor Rudolf Allemann interviewed on BBC Radio Wales

Kevin Jones from the School of Chemistry has won first prize in the SCI Fine Chemicals Group 21^st “Graduate Symposia for novel organic chemistry”.

Prof Mike Bowker & Dr Phil Davies are part of a team spearheaded by Prof Parkes that have been awarded a grant of £650k to investigate the generation of hydrogen by microorganisms that are present under the Earth’s surface at depths of up to ~3 km.

Researchers within the Cardiff Catalysis Institute of the School of Chemistry will be working with the newly announced HPC for Wales facility to improve our understanding of the atomic scale processes responsible for catalytic activity.

Scientists in the School of Chemistry Cardiff University and at the Biological Chemistry Department at Rothamsted Research have received an award worth over £1 million by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council

The BBC Website has highlighted work from the group of Professor Rudolf Allemann in the School of Chemistry. This project, carried out in collaboration with Professor Paul Smith and Dr Rachel Errington, Dr Arwyn Jones and Professor Huw Summers and funded by a £1.4M grant from EPSRC, may one day reveal how cancer cells survive attempts to kill them.

The School of Chemistry has a number of PhD studentships available from October 2010.

Applications are invited from well-qualified candidates to join a funded* drug discovery project from October 2010.  

The EPSRC are funding (£140k) a joint project between the Schools of Chemistry and Physics into the development of novel hybrid materials for improved photovoltaic device efficiencies. 

Dr. Eric Tippmann is involved in a £1.5M award from EPSRC to develop new physical methods to study stem cell differentiation. 

Dr. Jamie Platts has recently been awarded a Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust for “Accurate Simulation of Non-Covalent Interactions”, with £43K over two years.

The South West Structural Biology Consortium Meeting 2010 will take place on 22nd and 23rd June 2010 in the School of Chemistry, Cardiff University.

On Wednesday 24^th March the School of Chemistry hosted a Salters’ Festival of Chemistry, welcoming sixty Year 7 and 8 pupils from fifteen different schools from Wales and England.

A paper published in the journal Science describes research by Dr. Grazia Bezzu and Prof. Neil McKeown in which beautiful nanoporous crystals are made from iron phthalocyanine, a close relative of the important biologically active unit heme. 

Peter Hollamby is the Innovation and Engagement Coordinator in the School of Chemistry. Peter’s duties involve curriculum support for A level chemistry, and developing support mechanisms which aid first year undergraduate students in their transition to university education.

A new £489K project funded by EPSRC will help to uncover the importance of electron spins (paramagnetism) in organometallic redox centres, which are used for oligomerisation catalysis.

Seventy two PhD scholarships are being offered by the University over the next two years as part of a new £4M investment to coincide with the inauguration of Professor Sir Martin Evans (Nobel Prize for Medicine 2007) as Cardiff University’s new President.