Huge congratulations to 3rd year PhD student Bea Jones, who was awarded the Roscoe Medal (Gold prize) for Chemistry at the 2023 STEM for Britain event held on 6th March 2023 in the Houses of Parliament.

STEM for Britain is a major scientific poster exhibition which has been held in Parliament since 1997, which aims is to give members of both Houses of Parliament an insight into the outstanding research work being undertaken in UK universities by early-career researchers. 

Bea presented a poster entitled “Controlling Molecular Delivery by Squeezing Liquid Crystal Dispersions with Light” based on her recently published JACS paper (see November 2022 paper of the month). Bea is jointly funded by EPSRC and Diamond Light Source.

Congratulations to Kieran who successfully defended his PhD thesis on 1st March (St David’s day!). Kieran’s research focussed on the design of light-responsive Pickering emulsions and the development of computer vision methods to qualitatively assess emulsion formation and stability. You can read some of his work here.

Many thanks to his examiners – Prof Joe Keddie (University of Surrey) and Prof. Stuart Clarke (Chemistry, Cambridge).

Kieran is now working as a PDRA in Dr Emrys Evans’ group at Swansea University. Stay in touch!

This month we welcome Dr Zhihang Wang (left) and Dr Joshua Karlsson (right) to the group as researchers on the ERC SPECTRACON project.

Zhihang joins us from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, where he undertook his PhD and first postdoc position working on molecular solar thermal energy storage materials under the mentorship of Prof. Kasper Moth-Poulson.

Joshua brings a wealth of experience in molecular spectroscopy, having undertaken his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Anthony Harriman at Newcastle University, followed by a postdoc with Prof. Elizabeth (Libby) Gibson on photoelectrochemical water splitting.

We are delighted to have you both join us and look forward to working with you!

Goodbye to Bethan who is moving on to her new role as a Lecturer in Renewable Energy at the University of Bristol. Bethan joined the PAM group in January 2020 and has spent her time characterising luminescent materials for spectral convertors and sensors. She helped manage the group’s spectroscopy lab and spearheaded our sustainability drive. In her new role she’ll be continuing the sustainability theme by researching sustainable solar materials and developing a renewable energy course.

Final year PhD students Abi Collins and Helen Tunstall-Garcia attended and presented at their first international conference! The 3rd International Symposium on Singlet Fission and Photon Fusion: Emerging Solar Energy Technologies (ISPF2) was held in October 2022 at the Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca.

Both Helen and Abi received a Researcher Development grant of £500 each from the Royal Society of Chemistry to fund their travel, with the remainder of funding from the European Research Council SPECTRACON grant.

His project provides a sustainable solution to solve the energy crisis by creating a smart building-integrated photovoltaics system.

Find out more about the competition here.