Two ERC-funded PhD studentships are available in the Photoactive Materials group at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Dr Rachel Evans for an October 2019 start. Due to funding restriction these studentships are available to “home fees” students only.

Please see the “Opportunities” page for further information

Rachel gave an invited talk on the group’s work on spectral converted at the 2nd Joint NSFC-RSC Symposium on Novel Polymer Synthesis to Solve Tomorrow’s Problems: Healthcare, Materials and Energy at the University of Warwick (13/14th December 2018). This meeting brings together leading UK and Chinese researchers in the field of polymer chemistry. The first meeting in this series was in Guangzhou, China in September 2016, which Rachel was also lucky enough to attend.

Rachel and the group have been awarded a 2.1 m Euro Consolidator grant from the European Research Council. The SPECTRACON project will develop new organic-inorganic hybrid spectral converters to down- and up-convert sunlight to boost the efficiency of solar cells. PhD and PDRA vacancies will be advertised in January/February 2019, so watch this space!

Rachel talked about the group’s work on spectral converters at Symposium ET13—Materials for Multifunctional Windows. This was a highly focused symposium and it was great to hear about the exciting developments being made in the field. It was also Rachel’s first time in Boston and she took the chance to see the sights!

Congratulations to Camille Blayo, who submitted his PhD thesis on Friday. Camille has been holding the fort as the final student finishing in Trinity College Dublin, so this marks the end of an era!

Congratulations also to Barry McKenna, who graduated on Friday. Since completing his PhD in the group, Barry has recently started working for Sanofi Genzyme and an Analytical Chemist.

Our paper with Rute Ferreira and collaborators in the Universidade de Aveiro on blue-light amplifying organic–inorganic hybrids for visible light communications has been published in ACS Omega.

Flexible Optical Amplifier for Visible Light Communications Based on Organic-Inorganic Hybrids
A. Bastos, B. McKenna, M. Lima, P. André, L. D. Carlos, R. C. Evans and R. A. S. Ferreira*
ACS Omega, 2018, 3, 13772-13781.

Members of the group travelled to Swansea to participate in the Early Career Members meeting of the RSC Photophysics and Photochemistry Group (http://www.rsc.org/events/detail/33561/rsc-photochemistry-group-early-career-members-meeting) (20-21st September 2018).

Elaine presented a talk on her work on In-situ UV/Vis and SANS experiments on photo switchable wormlike micelles and Morton and Benedetta presented posters on their work on luminescent solar concentrators. As Chair of the RSC PPG, Rachel had the privilege to present the RSC Marlow Award to Dr Artem Bakulin from Imperial College London. Well done all!

Rachel has been admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) in recognition of the impact of her research and leadership in the general field of Chemistry.

Rachel has been elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3).

More information on the IOM# can be found here: http://www.iom3.org/about-iom3