Session 149

A very wet lab: Translating optical technology to the marine environment for ecophysiology measurement of free-ranging marine mammals

Dr Chris McKnight
18:15, Tuesday 5 October 2021

We have a very exciting talk by Dr Chris McKnight, a research fellow at the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St. Andrews. Check out the moodle page and facebook for event details and links!

Can we predict how organic molecules crystallise?

Professor Sally Price
18:15, Tuesday 12 October 2021

Join us on Tuesday for a talk by UCL's very own Professor Sally Price. Her research aims to model the intermolecular and intramolecular forces in organic molecules, such as pharmaceuticals, sufficiently realistically so that they can be used for predicting the crystallization and solid state properties of the molecules.

Superhero Science: The Next Time You Go to the Movies

Dr Sibrina Collins
13:00, Wednesday 13 October 2021

Dr Sibrina Collins will be talking about the uses of pop-culture as pedological resources in STEM education.

Sensors and Analytical Microsystems

Dr Ruchi Gupta
18:15, Tuesday 19 October 2021

Join us for a talk led by Dr Ruchi Gupta, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham.

Banking the World’s Seeds, and other stories…

Dr Christopher Cockel
13:00, Wednesday 20 October 2021

We have an exciting talk by Dr Christopher Cockel, the coordinator for the UK Native Seed Hub (UKNSH) at Kew Gardens.
The talk will look at the role of Millennium Seed Bank Partnership in safeguarding the world’s plant genetic resources at a time when plant populations globally are under unprecedented pressures from anthropogenic activities. I’ll explain why we do what we do and how we do it, and I’ll give some case study examples of recently concluded and active projects where seed banking is conserving these genetic resources for use in such activities as safeguarding future food security, for their medicinal properties, and in species conservation and habitat restoration more generally.

Bioinspired Processing of Soft Materials

Professor Esther Amstad
13:00, Wednesday 27 October 2021

This Wednesday lunchtime we have a super interesting talk by Professor Esther Amstad, a soft matter researcher at EPFL.
Nature produces materials possessing exceptional mechanical properties. These properties are to a large extent related to the well-defined structure and locally varying composition of natural materials. Key to the excellent control nature possesses over the structure and local composition of its materials is their fabrication: Many of these materials are formed from compartmentalized reagents that are transported to the desired locations where they are locally released. Inspired by nature, we use emulsion drops as compartments to build macroscopic granular load-bearing soft materials. In this talk, I will demonstrate how we use emulsion drops to produce self-healing capsules that controllably release reagents on demand and how we convert these capsules and microparticles into strong macroscopic hydrogels. These hydrogels can bear significant loads, a feature that is frequently seen in natural hydrogels, but very rarely obtained in synthetic counterparts.

Bioelectronics in Tissue Engineering and Disease Modeling

Dr Brian Timko
18:15, Thursday 28 October 2021

Join us for a talk led by Prof Brian Timko, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University.
Hybrid bioelectronic systems offer a unique route toward achieving two-way electronic communication with living cells and tissues. Recent advances in bioelectronics and bioactive materials have enabled multiplexed, stable and seamless interfaces with surrounding cells and tissues, representing a distinct advantage over conventional systems such as patch clamp and optical dyes. We will first present an overview of our recent heart-on-a-chip platform which integrated both extra- and intracellular devices for monitoring cardiac electrophysiology during episodes of acute hypoxia. This system allowed us to monitor not only cell-cell communication (e.g., wavefront propagation) but also action potentials at several spatially-distinct regions simultaneously. Our platform provided a unique route toward understanding the role of hypoxia on ion channel dynamics. For example, we found that APs narrowed during hypoxia, consistent with proposed mechanisms by which oxygen deficits activate ATP-dependent K+ channels that promote membrane repolarization. We will next discuss routes toward extending our bioelectronic platform to 3D, enabling new classes of hybrid, devices-embedded tissues. We developed a Photo-crosslinkable Silk Fibroin (PSF) derivative which was compatible with conventional photolithography processes and enabled flexible scaffolds with well-defined geometries and cm-scale uniformity. Our freestanding PSF-based scaffolds supported bioelectronic devices, provided excellent electrical passivation, and adhered both cardiac and neuron model cells, opening new avenues toward engineered brain hybrids. We will also present recent work to develop electromagnetic stimulation elements for spatially-selective cellular activation. Taken together, these research directions open new avenues for engineered, bioelectronics-innervated cardiac and brain systems. We will discuss prospects for merging our bioelectronic devices with state-of-the-art tissue engineering techniques.

Fragments of Crystalline Silicon via Target-Oriented Synthesis

Professor Rebekka Klausen
18:15, Tuesday 2 November 2021

Join us for a talk led by Professor Rebekka Klausen, a associate professor at JHU Department of Chemistry.
Daily life depends on the ubiquitous semiconductor silicon: computers, solar cells, and many more. Yet silicon synthesis relies on top-down, high-temperature approaches that yield only the most thermodynamically stable forms of silicon. Uncovering new structure-function space demands a different synthetic vision. This talk will describe the synthesis of molecular and polymeric silanes inspired by the complexity, selectivity, and elegance of target-oriented organic synthesis. Topics include the chemoselective polymerization of novel bifunctional silane monomers, selective preparation of linear and cyclic polycyclosilanes, and the stereocontrolled synthesis of cis- and trans-siladecalin. Approaches to the structural characterization of novel silane architectures will also be discussed.

Molecular Organisation: A Journey Through Complex Structures

Professor Neil Champness
13:00, Wednesday 3 November 2021

Join us for a talk by Professor Neil Champness, his work at the University of Birmingham focuses on supramolecular chemistry!
Synopsis:
Non-covalent directional intermolecular interactions provide a pre-determined recognition pathway which has been widely exploited in supramolecular chemistry to form functional nanostructures in the solid-state, in solution and on surfaces. Our studies using intermolecular interactions to enable the directed assembly of extended nanostructures will be presented.
The talk will include studies of solid-state self-assembly to create metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), including examples that enable the crystallographic study of reaction processes; solution-phase self-assembly of interlocked structures, including new molecular handcuff structures that facilitate studies of the effect of intermolecular stacking on optical and redox properties; and surface-based self-assembly studies including highly unusual random self-assembly.

Using Dietary Tracers to Understand the Feeding Ecology of North Atlantic Killer Whales

Anaïs Remili
18:15, Tuesday 16 November 2021

Join us on Tuesday for a talk by Anaïs Remili, a PhD candidate at McGill University. On top of her research on killer whales, Anaïs is the founder of Whale Scientists, a science communication platform about marine mammals that features early-career marine mammalogists.
Synopsis:
Killer whales (Orcinus orca) are among the most contaminated animals on the planet. Their exposure to high levels of contaminants like persistent organic pollutants (POPs) has been thought to contribute to reduced reproductive success and population growth. As a generalist apex predator with a tendency to adopt prey specializations at the individual or population level, killer whales may provide critical insights into how feeding ecology may influence/drive contaminant accumulation. The use of chemical tracers has increased in the last decades due to their relative ease of sampling and ability to reflect integrated diet signals over time. This talk will dive into the North Atlantic Ocean and apply chemical tracers to different killer whale populations to understand their diets and contaminant exposures.

Solvation and Sorption: The old thermodynamic questions that still haunt us today

Dr Seishi Shimizu
13:00, Wednesday 17 November 2021

Join us for a talk by Dr Seishi Shimizu on the complexities of Thermodynamics!
Synopsis:
There are questions that trouble us when we apply chemistry. Why does this molecule dissolve so poorly? Why isn't this macromolecule stable in water? Why does this powder mixture suck up so much moisture? These questions are very difficult to answer because prediction schemes are still quite limited. The difficulty comes from the theoretical foundation: statistical thermodynamics. I will try my best to tell you why these questions are difficult and why statistical thermodynamics, despite its difficulty, is a fascinating and rewarding subject that reveals the fundamental principles beneath real-life and industrial questions.

Chemical Biology Studies of the Thalidomide Binding Domain of Cereblon

Professor Christina Woo
18:15, Tuesday 23 November 2021

Join us for a talk led by Professor Christina Woo, an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, and an affiliate member of the Broad Institute. Christina’s research focuses on the design of small molecule and protein approaches to alter post-translational modifications and the signaling outcomes they produce.
Synopsis:
The E3 ligase adaptor cereblon is a target of thalidomide and lenalidomide, therapeutic agents that are used in the treatment of hematopoietic cancers despite teratogenic toxicity. These agents act in part by modulating substrate selection and degradation through the thalidomide binding domain of cereblon. However, despite the expanding use of cereblon in targeted protein degradation technologies, identification of a degron, the recognition domain that controls the endogenous substrate selection mechanisms of cereblon, has remained elusive. Here, I will describe chemoproteomics approaches to target identification in the study of molecular glues like lenalidomide, and how these chemical biology approaches can reveal new insights about the thalidomide binding domain of cereblon.

Two Centuries of the Rare Earths

Dr Simon Cotton
13:00, Wednesday 1 December 2021

We have an exciting talk by Dr Simon Cotton, a science communicator who has written over 7 books about transition metals, lanthanides and actinides!
Synopsis:
There are seventeen rare earths - scandium, yttrium and the lanthanides. At the time that Mendeleev published his first Periodic Table (1869), only five of these elements were known; their discovery and isolation extended from 1794 until 1947. In the last half century or so, many developments have taken place in their chemistry - extending the range of their coordination numbers, an increasing number of compounds in unusual oxidation states, and most recently lanthanide-containing enzymes, raising questions about their role in living systems. Applications bring rare earths into our lives – batteries, lighting, hard drives in PCs and wind turbines are among the examples. This talk will examine several aspects of these remarkable elements.

Plants of the São Paulo State Cerrado as Sources of Bioactive Compounds and Sustainability

Professor Patrícia Pauletti
18:15, Tuesday 7 December 2021

Join us for a talk led by Prof Patrícia Mendonca Pauletti, a professor and researcher at the University of Franca (UNIFRAN), state of São Paulo, Brazil.
Synopsis:
In the past, the São Paulo State Cerrado vegetation occupied 14% of the territory of the state of São Paulo. However, today this vegetation constitutes only 1% of the territory of this state due to growing loss of biodiversity and occupation of this biome by various economic activities. Consequently, the Cerrado areas have become cause for environmental concern and have been included among the most threatened natural ecosystems. In this scenario, protecting and promoting rational exploitation of plant biodiversity as a source of new products, such as medicines, has strategic importance for sustainable use. Plants have been selected for chemical studies and in vitro bioassays involving human cell cultures and parasites. The chemical studies have identified the presence of flavonoids, triterpenes, norneolignans, alkyl-phenols, and phenylethanoids glycosides mainly. Most of these compounds display moderate to weak activity in vitro; few present promising activity. Therefore, studies on crude extracts of new plant species should continue to contribute to chemical knowledge and chemosystematics, and some compounds deserve to be further investigated, so that their mechanism of action and activity in vivo can be established.

Stradivarius Crystal Clear

Dr Kreso Bucar
18:15, Tuesday 4 October 2022

A luthier and chemist looks back at two centuries of investigations of violins made during the golden age of violin making in Cremona and explains the science behind the good vibrations of a Stradivarius.

Biomimetic Colour Engineering from Nature to Applications

Prof Silvia Vignolini
13:00, Wednesday 5 October 2022

The most brilliant colours in nature are obtained by structuring transparent materials on the scale of the wavelength of visible light. By designing the dimensions of such nanostructures, it is possible to achieve extremely intense colourations over the entire visible spectrum without using pigments or colorants. Colour obtained through structure, namely structural colour, is widespread in the animal and plant kingdom [1]. Such natural photonic nanostructures are generally synthesised in ambient conditions using a limited range of biopolymers. Given these limitations, an amazing range of optical structures exists: from very ordered photonic structures [2], to partially disordered [3], to completely random ones [4].  

In this seminar, I will introduce some striking example of natural photonic structures [2-4] and share some insight on their development. Then I will review our recent advances to fabricate bio-mimetic photonic structures using the same material as nature. Developing biomimetic structures with cellulose enables us to fabricate novel photonic materials using low cost polymers in ambient conditions [6-7]. Importantly, it also allows us to understand the biological processes at work during the growth of these structures in plants. 

[1] Kinoshita, S. et al. (2008). Physics of structural colors. Rep. Prog. Phys. 71(7), 076401.  

[2] Vignolini, S. et al. (2012). Pointillist structural color in Pollia fruit. PNAS 109, 15712-15716. 

[3] Moyroud, E. et al. (2017). Disorder in convergent floral nanostructures enhances signalling to bees. Nature 550, 469. 

[4] Burresi M. et al. (2014) Bright-White Beetle Scales Optimise Multiple Scattering of Light. Sci. Rep.  4,  727 

[5] Parker R. et al. (2018) The Self-Assembly of Cellulose Nanocrystals: Hierarchical Design of Visual Appearance. Adv Mat 30, 1704477 

[6] Parker R. et al. (2016). Hierarchical Self-Assembly of Cellulose Nanocrystals in a Confined Geometry. ACS Nano, 10 (9), 8443–8449 

[7] Liang H-L. et al. (2018). Roll-to-roll fabrication of touch-responsive cellulose photonic laminates, Nat Com 9, 4632 

Synthetic Sensory Physiology

Prof Dirk Trauner
18:15, Thursday 6 October 2022

Dirk Trauner was born and raised in Linz, Austria, studied biology and chemistry at the University of Vienna, and received his Master’s degree in chemistry from the Free University, Berlin. He then pursued a Ph.D. in chemistry under the direction of Prof. Johann Mulzer, with whom he moved to the University of Frankfurt and then back to Vienna. Subsequently, he became a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Samuel J. Danishefsky at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. After two years in New York City, Dr. Trauner joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where he rose through the ranks to become an Associate Professor of chemistry and a member of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In the summer of 2008, he moved to the University of Munich, where he served as a Professor of Chemical Biology and Chemical Genetics. In March of 2017 he returned to the U.S. to become the Janice Cutler Chair of Chemistry at New York University. In the Summer of 2022, be became a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor at the University of Pennsylvania with an appointment in the Perelman School of Medicine and in the Department of Chemistry. He is a member of the Leopoldina Academy of Sciences and the Austrian Academia of Sciences, and a recipient of the Otto Bayer Award, the Emil Fischer Medal, an ACS Cope Scholar Award, and a Sloan Fellowship.   

The broad objective of Prof. Trauner’s research is to demonstrate the awesome power of chemical synthesis and to use it toward the precision control of biological pathways, especially in neuroscience. 

How to Enable a Low Carbon and Sustainable Electric Revolution

Sean Sargent
18:15, Tuesday 11 October 2022

Sean will provide an overview of a new process to refine battery-grade lithium salts for lithium-ion batteries. He will describe Green Lithium’s plans to decarbonise the process and employ circular economies to minimise the wastes produced and ensure sustainability. The process, developed by Green Lithium’s technology provider, uses an evolution of a traditional method employing pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy. 

State of Play with Fusion Energy

Dr. Thomas Davis
18:15, Tuesday 18 October 2022

For sustainable, non-carbon dioxide emitting, long-term energy production, nuclear fusion energy is widely perceived to be the ultimate terrestrial energy source. Fusion energy is experiencing a rapid period of investment, innovation, and growth that has never been seen before. As of today, many governments are enabling and funding public fusion energy projects, such as the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) whilst private fusion companies work towards commercialising fusion energy. Private fusion companies have received approximately $4.9 billion of private funding to date, with a high % invested in 2021 alone. The industry has been gaining momentum and this decade should yield milestone results to demonstrating fusion energy as a real source of energy. However, fusion energy environmental conditions for the structural and functional materials are extreme and still unsolved. This talk will discuss the latest commercial and technical developments (and challenges) in fusion energy from the perspective of a nuclear materials scientist.  

Investigation into corrosion protection at the Port of Dover

Dr. Aaron Berko
18:15, Tuesday 25 October 2022

Corrosion, an electrochemical process requiring oxygen and water is an expensive and common problem, it is estimated that it costs 3 - 4% of the world’s GDP for corrosion maintenance every year. It is an inevitable process that is extremely difficult to stop.  It can, however, be slowed down as it is heavily contingent on the environment that the material undergoing corrosion is in.  

Marine environments such as the Port of Dover which increase the wettability of iron or steel structures promote corrosion.  This along with other local conditions at the Port exacerbates corrosion of steel assets.    

Investigation into these conditions and the chemistry of corrosion revealed some interesting results which will be discussed in this presentation along with some protective measures that can be employed.  

CO2 Utilization and Water Treatment Opportunities Enabled by Molecular Electrocatalysis

Dr. Hailiang Wang
18:15, Thursday 27 October 2022

Transition to clean energy, mitigation of carbon emissions, and protection of water resources are critical challenges for the world. Solving these challenges requires precise control of many important chemical reactions with sluggish kinetics and myriad possible reaction pathways and associated products. There is a critical need for selective, active, durable and low-cost catalysts. This talk will present our research efforts aimed at bridging the gap between homogenous catalysis and heterogeneous catalysis to realize materials with new or improved electrocatalytic properties for the CO2 and nitrate reduction reactions. Combining molecule-nanocarbon hybridization and second-coordination-sphere tailoring, we discovered the first molecular electrocatalyst for CO2-to-methanol conversion in significant yield and stability. The reduction proceeds via formaldehyde, an intermediate potentially reactive to N nucleophiles. Following this path, we developed the first electrosynthesis of methylamine from CO2 and nitrate. This 15-proton 14-electron reduction reaction proceeds via an 8-step catalytic cascade with the spontaneous condensation reaction between the formaldehyde and hydroxylamine intermediates to form the C-N bond. Further, we advanced the chemistry to ethylamine formation and N-methylation reactions, opening the door for our electrocatalytic reactions to be used for organic synthesis using CO2/nitrate as a C1/N1 building block. 

Labwork gone wild, taking hormone research from the bench to the great outdoors

Dr Kelly Robinson
18:15, Tuesday 1 November 2022

Studying how physiology responds to problems like pollution or disturbance are key for understanding individual health and survival, but doing this with wildlife species is challenging, especially if your study species spends most of its life underwater. With some ingenuity and perseverance, adapting laboratory techniques to unusual locations and tricky study species is possible and can yield great results. This talk will cover the ways we have been able to achieve this and my resulting work on hormones in wild marine mammals, which includes understanding bonding behaviour in mothers and offspring via oxytocin research and using tissue culture to uncover the problems exposure to persistent organic pollutants causes for energetic balance during key life history stages.  

Biohybrid Approaches to Renewable Energy Conversion

Dr. Jenny Zhang
18:15, Tuesday 15 November 2022

Developing a Polyvalent Multifunctional Nanoparticle Strategy

Prof. Dejian Zhou
13:00, Wednesday 16 November 2022

A Tale of Two Stained Glasses

Dr. Laura Kaufman
18:15, Thursday 17 November 2022

It is commonly stated that stained glass windows in medieval cathedrals are thicker on the bottom than on the top because glass flows, albeit very slowly. Learn whether this is true and how my laboratory uses modern imaging technologies to “stain glass” and look at the behaviour of individual molecules within the glassy systems known as supercooled liquids. I will describe the unusual dynamics – termed spatially heterogeneous dynamics – present in these systems. Tracking the rotational motion of individual fluorescent probe molecules, we investigate the time scales over which these heterogeneous dynamics persist. Most recently, we undertook challenging experiments in which we monitored rotational and translational motions of single molecules to understand the origins of a puzzling phenomenon that suggests that molecules move slowly rotationally but quickly translationally in these supercooled systems.

Applying Science & Finance To Stop Climate Change

Prof. Michael Mainelli
18:15, Tuesday 22 November 2022

In 1997 at COP3 in Tokyo, the world agreed to use carbon pricing as the principal financial mechanism to avert climate change.  According to the Economist, by the end of 2021 more than 21% of the world’s emissions were covered by some form of carbon pricing, up from 15% in 2020, with some 64 countries either having a carbon tax and/or an emissions trading system.  A quarter of a century later, the COP3 agreement is making a difference.  Yet, if you were to listen to the financial services industry itself, most recently at COP26 in Glasgow, the world will be saved by tracking environmental, social, and governance (ESG) indicators, with scarcely a mention of full carbon trading.  How can it be that the financial services industry isn’t promoting a market-based solution?

Organisations are looking at how to score well in the ESG rankings but is ESG a driver for change?  It is likely that ESG has a place in a number of areas, but one of them might not be emissions.  Professor Michael Mainelli questions the use of ESG in reducing emissions and will use this session to explore ETS history, assess its promise, and probe its relevance to the City. He argues that financial services role is to bind with markets to  help people make better decisions, trillions of small economic decisions on sustainability. Decisions based on hard financial transactions will aid market enforcement and supply chain tracking.  He observes that traditional market drivers could be applied, e.g. competition, open data, better regulation, and voluntary standards markets.

In order to better unite financial markets and government policies, since 2005 he and his firm, Z/Yen, the City of London’s leading commercial think-tank, have successfully promoted the use of a complementary financial instrument, policy performance bonds (aka sustain for climate change purposes as sustainability-linked bonds). The policy performance bond market rose to US$110bn in 2021, and this year saw the first issuance of a sovereign bond, Chile’s US$2bn sustainability-linked bond in March 2022.  Michael recommends that financial services should lobby for costed carbon and financial cuffs on government policy (policy performance bonds). The implication for financial services is a shift from lipstick on financial institutions to the straightforward incorporation of emissions costs in everyday decision-making across the economy, not just for investment analysts.

A Vegetarian Scientist (and can vegetarians eat coral?)

Cally Haynes
18:15, Tuesday 3 October 2023

Scientific questions and ethical dilemmas I’ve encountered growing up as a life-long vegetarian, including: dissecting what vegetarians “can” eat; well-known vegetarian scientists; the science of plant-based meat-substitutes, and whether they really are a green alternative. This talk is not designed to preach, guilt-trip or convert the audience, but instead to share my own (occasionally humorous) experiences and perspective on where our (plant-based) food comes from. 

Financial Wellbeing

HSBC
18:15, Tuesday 17 October 2023

Experienced financial advisers from HSBC would be sharing advices on managing and growing wealth, starting our careers, first time buying home, retirement plans, and making the most with our money.

Wither The Pharmaceutical Industry?

David Lathbury
18:15, Tuesday 24 October 2023

Despite decades of success, there still remain large areas of unmet medical need. Many of the major causes of suffering e.g., acute inflammation, pain. Although it is common to look at these as predominantly scientific challenges, there are also some deep-seated issues with respect to the NPV (net present value) of drug projects. I will outline these challenges and offer some possible solutions but also suggest that the length of exclusivity is also something that needs to be debated. 

Supercriticality: From Blue Fluid to Green Chemistry

Sir Martyn Poliakoff
18:15, Tuesday 31 October 2023

This lecture describes how I became fascinated in supercritical fluids (SCFs), which are gases such as CO2, compressed until they are nearly as dense as liquids. SCFs display an unusual combination of some of the properties of gases and liquids. I explain how SCFs led me to work in Green Chemistry, developing cleaner, more sustainable ways of making chemicals and materials. I also show how chance played a big role in determining how things developed for me and led me to the interface of chemistry and engineering. I thank all of my students, coworkers, collaborators, technicians and collaborators, particularly Professor Mike George, for all of their help and support. I also that all of the organisations that have funded my research. 

Commercialising and Scaling University Research from Bench to Product

Jon-Paul Griffiths
18:15, Tuesday 21 November 2023

The talk will highlight the opportunities and challenges with the commercialisation of early-stage University research from the lab bench through to products which are used in industry. The process of forming, financing and running a spin-out will be covered along with the practical aspects of progressing commercial R&D, product design and effective protection of intellectual property. 

Space Propulsion – A Chemist’s Insight

Sam Wilson
18:15, Tuesday 5 December 2023

This talk will place a spotlight on in-space rocket propulsion, highlighting the exciting work that goes on at companies such as Airbus (Europe’s largest space company). The speaker will reflect on his own journey within propulsion R&D and outline some of the key challenges & technologies set to shape the next 10+ years. The talk aims to illustrate the important role chemists & chemistry play in this evolving field. 

Robots and Automation for Chemical Reaction Optimization

Dr Nessa Carson
18:15, Tuesday 11 January 2022

Join us for a engaging talk by Dr Nessa Carson, a professional organic chemist working with laboratory automation (robots) to perform high-throughput experimentation in the private sector.

Synopsis:
High-throughput experimentation is a growing, enabling technology that allows running large, parallel sets of chemistry experiments. This type of automation is used increasingly in both research and development for pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, batteries, and materials chemistry. Often, robotics are used to dispense compounds on milligram to sub-milligram scale, to run many parallel reactions, and to analyse large datasets. The approaches to experimental design, implementation and analysis are distinct from traditional synthetic organic chemistry. The discipline also presents a profitable opportunity for individual scientists to learn about and explore fields adjacent to chemistry, including data science, robotics and equipment engineering, and computer programming.

Communicating With Our Universe

Prof. Claudia de Rham
13:00, Wednesday 12 January 2022

Abstract:

Throughout our history, we have gathered information from the Universe that surrounds us through the light it emits. We have seen the Universe through our own eyes and instruments. The direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015 has marked the beginning of a new era for science where we are now able to hear the Universe. In this event we will discuss how gravitational waves can be used as a privileged channel of communication with the Universe, potentially providing insight on the nature of gravity, the origin of the Universe and the dark components it carries. 

Peering Into the Exciton: Imaging its Electron and Hole Constituents

Prof. Keshav Dani
18:15, Tuesday 18 January 2022

Abstract:

In the 1930s, Frenkel, Wannier and others described the existence of a two-particle excitation – an exciton, that forms when an insulator or semiconductor absorbs light. The resulting photoexcited electron binds to the oppositely charged hole creating the exciton.

Since then, we have learned that excitons are critical to understanding the optical response of semiconductors and insulators. They impact a variety of interesting phenomena in condensed matter physics, materials systems and opto-electronic devices. However, they have largely been studied using only optical techniques. This leaves an important degree of freedom of the exciton inaccessible – its momentum. For decades, accessing the momentum coordinates of an exciton has been a grand challenge, promising rich knowledge of the exciton. But this is a non-trivial task for a variety of technical and conceptual reasons.

Over several years now, we’ve developed novel time-resolved photoemission spectroscopy tools in my lab at OIST that enable us to access the momentum coordinates of the exciton in two-dimensional semiconductors. In this talk, I will discuss what we have learned from such measurements – from making movies of the formation dynamics of dark excitons [1], to visualizing the real and momentum-space distributions of the electron [2] and hole [3] inside the exciton.

[1] Science 370, 1199 (2020).

[2] Science Advances 7, eabg0192 (2021).

[3] arXiv:2108.01933 (2021)

Revealing the Atomic-Level Structure of Biomolecules in Solution

Dr Natasha Rhys
18:15, Tuesday 25 January 2022

From Order to Disorder: NMR Insights into Ionic Conduction in Battery Solid Electrolytes

Prof. Raphaele Clément
18:15, Tuesday 1 February 2022

Sebum Based Metabolomics: A Quest for my Tricorder

Dr Drupad Trivedi
18:15, Thursday 3 February 2022

Yukawa coupling between the Higgs boson and tau leptons with the CMS experiment at CERN

Mohammad Hassanshahi
18:15, Tuesday 8 February 2022

Sensitive and Selective Bioanalysis using SERS and SESORS 

Prof Karen Faulds
13:00, Wednesday 9 February 2022

ABSTRACT:

Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is an analytical technique with several advantages over competitive techniques in terms of improved sensitivity and multiplexing. We have made great progress in the development of SERS as a quantitative analytical method. Many bioanalytical detection methods exist, with fluorescence spectroscopy tending to dominate, however SERS has the advantage that it is both sensitive and has the ability to multiplex which is limited when using techniques such as fluorescence. We have developed approaches to both identify and quantify the presence of multiple analytes within a mixture e.g. pathogenic DNA sequences, bacteria using SERS combined with data analysis techniques.   

Here we demonstrate the development of new bioanalytical assays based upon SERS which have been used successfully for the detection of bacterial pathogens using modified SERS active probes. Biomolecule functionalised nanoparticles have been designed to give a specific SERS response resulting in discernible differences in the SERS which can be correlated to the presence of specific pathogens. In this presentation the simultaneous detection and quantitation of 3 pathogens within a multiplex sample will be demonstrated. We also explore the use of functionalized nanoparticles for the phenotypic screening of breast cancer cells and to study the effect of drug treatment on receptor status. The uptake of targeted versus non-targeted nanoparticles in breast cancer spheroids using a microfluidics approach will also be discussed. We have also recently published the use of nanoparticles functionalised with resonant Raman reporter molecule for the visualization of a 3D breast cancer tumour models at depth using Spatially Offset Raman combined with SERRS (SESORRS).  

Unusual Chemistry from Cyanobacteria

Dr Pedro Leao
18:15, Tuesday 22 February 2022

Managing Your Mental Health: A Conversation I wish​ I could have with my younger self.

Dr Zoe Ayres
18:15, Thursday 24 February 2022

Bioelectronics in Tissue Engineering and Disease Modelling

Prof Brian Timko
18:15, Tuesday 1 March 2022

International Women’s Day

Jessica Wade
18:15, Tuesday 8 March 2022

Join us for a talk led by Jessica Wade for International Women's Day!

“Science and storytelling: how who we talk about matters.”

Despite women leading the development of the Moderna, Astra Zeneca and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines, only half of UK adults can name a woman scientist. That’s not entirely surprising given the GCSE national curriculum for science doesn’t include a single woman’s name. Jess will talk about how who we talk about matters and how we can make our science classrooms more inclusive spaces. She’ll also discuss her efforts to increase visibility of scientists from historically marginalised groups on Wikipedia, her research in materials science and nanotechnology, the power of social media for early career researchers and her new picture book ‘Nano, the Spectacular Science of the Very (Very) Small,’.

How the Nose Knows – in You, a Maggot and a Neanderthal 

Prof. Matthew Cobb
18:15, Tuesday 15 March 2022

Smell is our most enigmatic sense. It plays a fundamental role in many aspects of animal life, underpins many ecological relationships and provides us with sensory pleasure, and yet we understand very little of how it works. This has become a growing issue in the current pandemic, with so many people suffering from various forms of smell and taste disorder. In this talk I will explain what we do and do not know about olfaction, and show how we can use genetics to find out more, in both model organisms and our extinct relatives. There will be a brief interactive session at the beginning, so please come along with something small to eat, like a jelly bean, or a grape! 

Presidential Talk: Stradivarius Crystal Clear

Dr Kreso Bucar
18:15, Tuesday 22 March 2022

Climate Change and Policy

Matt Frost
18:15, Tuesday 9 January 2024

My work is on climate change more broadly (of which ocean and heat is just a part). I will be talking about climate change and the oceans, and in particular, the challenge of how that is communicated to policy-makers and government.

Chemist to Elephant Polo in Katmandu 

Bruce Green
18:15, Tuesday 23 January 2024

The story of how a Chemist and RSC Member ended up becoming Captain of The British Elephant Polo Team and leading the charge to Kathmandu and the World Championships with the help of Terry Wogan & a BBC interview with Gloria Hunniford! 

Designing New Antibacterial Drugs

Alastair Parkes
18:15, Tuesday 6 February 2024

In the talk I would give a brief overview of the drug discovery process and describe the particular challenges of antibacterial drug discovery. The significant scientific challenges are added to by problems with the market for novel antibiotics. I will talk about past approaches and their pitfalls before describing some ongoing approaches that are beginning to address some of these challenges. 

Bush Lane House 

Alan Denney
18:15, Tuesday 19 March 2024

Bush Lane House, designed by Arup Associates, is in the City of London and was constructed in 1973-5. There are large cantilevers from the pre-designated support pile and column positions (due to planned tube tunnels beneath it) which resulted in a lattice structure.  After undertaking fabrication and materials studies a decision was taken to use prefabricated tubular lattice frames filled with a cooling liquid for fire protection and fabricated from centrifugally cast duplex stainless steel tubes and sand cast nodes.