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Chemistry Newsletter 2020

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Chemistry Newsletter 2020 UCL Chemistry NEWSLETTER Special Feature Introduction by Claire Carmalt, UCL Chemistry & Covid-19 Head of Department Page 16 X ell this has been the projects for postgraduate taught strangest, most unpredict- students. We were really proud able academic year that with how all the students coped Wwe have all ever experienced. We with all the necessary changes. started the academic year working Researchers in the department out how to cope with a bumper used their remote working time undergraduate productively with student intake, writing papers, then two strikes reports, general and finally literature reading the Covid-19 etc. We re-opened pandemic! via a partial return on 15th June and We closed the researchers have departmental responded really buildings on well with excellent 18th March and following of the access was new safety guide- limited to critical lines. maintenance of equipment, This academic research activ- year Professor Contents ity taking place to address Covid-19 Francesco Gervasio moved to the and the synthesis of hand sanitiser University of Geneva but will retain Staff Highlights & News 2 which was distributed to UCLH a part time appointment at UCL. EDI 6 and care homes across London, We welcomed three new lecturers which you can read more about in to the department, Dr Rebecca Student Highlights 9 this newsletter. I have been hugely Ingle and Dr Sabrina Simoncelli Societies 12 impressed with the resilience in Physical Chemistry and Dr Tim Chemistry & Covid-19 16 shown by UCL Chemistry staff and Hele in Computational Chemistry. Research Highlights 26 students through the lockdown Sabrina is a joint appointment with Alumni 29 and remote working despite many the LCN and she has a Royal Soci- having challenging working condi- ety Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship Publications 30 tions and balancing with home life and Tim will start a Royal Society Grants 42 responsibilities. University Research Fellowship Staff 45 (URF) in October. Dr Elizabeth The department continued working Munday has joined us as a new closely together with a great Teaching Fellow focussing on community spirit putting in a huge Synthetic Laboratories. In addition, amount of effort to move teaching Dr James Attwater will join us as a and assessments online for our Royal Society URF and Dr Joseph students and developing remote Forth and Dr Chris Savory will be Continued on page 2 Introduction (Cont.) New Appointments starting Ramsay Trust Fellowships during the next academic year. We also welcomed Frances Thomson who started as our Postgraduate Teaching & Learning Administrator, Matthew Nolan as our Assistant Teaching & Learning Dr. Sabrina Simoncelli the London Centre for Nanotechnol- Dr Tim Hele Administrator and Dr Lorena Ruiz-Perez moved role to Liquid Transmission Electron Microscopy Facility Manager. ogy. The group combines advances in photonic nanostructures with opti- There have been a number of awards within the department. Two members of the department received awards from cal microscopy and spectroscopy the Royal Society of Chemistry. Dr Anna Regoutz has been awarded the Joseph Black Award and Professor Richard to image, sense and manipulate Catlow was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Faraday Lectureship Prize. Dr Stephen Potts, a Senior Teach- biological objects at the nanoscale. ing Fellow in the department, received a UCL Provost Education Award for his outstanding contribution to e-learning in the department. Dr Rebecca Ingle UCL Chemistry did extremely well in the UCL One Awards with Liz Read receiving the Ways of Working: Personal Excellence Award, Dr Dewi Lewis being recognised with the Leadership Award for Outstanding Contribution and our Security Officer Saeed Said winning the Outstanding Contribution to Staff Experience award. Yet again the department had an excellent intake for 2019/20 and ended up recruiting 200 UG students, along with 115 Masters students and 50 PhD/EngD students. This is a superb achievement particularly since many UK univer- sities were still struggling to fill their places on chemistry courses. Some upgrades have been able to be completed including the 3rd floor synthetic laboratories and the Laser Science Centre in the basement of the Christopher Ingold Building. Dr. Sabrina Simoncelli, born in Tim Hele is a theoretical chemist We were sorry to see final year and Masters students time at UCL cut short and that Graduation ceremonies had to Buenos Aires, received both her who likes to design highly efficient be moved online. Currently, it is looking unlikely that we will be able to organise the Lab Dinner in 2020. However, I first degree (2010) and her PhD organic light-emitting diodes do really look forward to when we can all fully get back into the department. Having been at UCL for nearly 23 years (2014) in Chemistry from the Univer- (OLEDs) and investigate quantum it is very strange not going in every day! sity of Buenos Aires, Argentina. time evolution. Keep safe and well. Her PhD research focused on the development of nanosized plas- He read Chemistry at Exeter Professor Claire Carmalt monic devices to boost temporal Rebecca Ingle joined the depart- College, Oxford, followed by a and spatial detection limits in optical ment in January 2020. Her PhD at PhD in theoretical chemistry at microscopy. the University of Bristol involved Cambridge where he and Professor using laser spectroscopy to study Stuart Althorpe derived Quantum After completion of her PhD, gas and solution phase photochem- Transition-State Theory, for which Sabrina spent a year and half as a istry, alongside complementary he was awarded the Coulson Prize post-doctoral researcher at Ludwig computational modelling and by Professor Sally Price. He then Maximilian University of Munich, involved two fellowships to work at took up a Research Fellowship at Germany, exploiting surface plas- the Kyoto University on techniques Jesus College Cambridge, before mons in metallic nanostructures to for ultrafast VUV generation. going on a two-year sabbatical as a Staff Highlights & News heat biomolecules at the nanoscale. postdoc at Cornell University in the In late 2016, Sabrina joined Imperial She was a postdoctoral research USA. College London, where she devel- associate at EPFL, Switzerland, Promotions oped super-resolution fluorescence during which she started to develop After returning to Cambridge he microscopy imaging approaches to techniques for multidimensional moved to the group of Professor We are very proud to announce the following senior promotions of the department, effective from 1st October. study plasmon-induced reactions. spectroscopy and using X-Ray Sir Richard Friend where he was Then, Sabrina moved to King’s methods for monitoring the excit- part of team who designed the College London as a Human Fron- ed-state dynamics of molecules. world’s most efficient deep-red tier Science Program fellow. There, LED and published this in Nature. she expanded her research inter- Rebecca’s research interests He looks forward to meeting his ests towards biological sciences, include using a variety of spec- new colleagues (if only remotely) implementing a DNA-based troscopic techniques, including and starting exciting collaborations super-resolution imaging technique multidimensional optical spec- in optoelectronics and quantum to visualise protein interactions in troscopy and time-resolved X-ray dynamics. cells of the immune system. spectroscopy, to understand photoinduced processes in the Martijn Zwijnenburg Bob Schroeder Giorgio Volpe Abil Aliev Since January 2020, Sabrina relo- solution and gas phase. She partic- To Professor in To Associate Professor in To Associate Professor of To Principal Research cated to University College London, ularly enjoys working with complex Computational Chemistry Organic Chemistry Physical Chemistry Fellow to start a Royal Society Dorothy organic and inorganic molecules Hodgkin Fellowship and take-up a and combining theory and experi- joint Lecturer appointment between ment. the Department of Chemistry and 2 UCL Chemistry NEWSLETTER 2020 Staff Highlights 2020 UCL Chemistry NEWSLETTER 3 Ramsay Fellows Provost UCL One Awards Dr Joseph Forth Dr Christopher Savory Education Elizabeth Read our Professional Services (TOPS). virtual teaching to kick-start the Ways of Working: Personal She prioritises finding solutions Department into implementing a Joe got his Chris Awards Excellence Award. collaboratively and is always long planned change in teaching PhD in Phys- obtained Liz has been Departmental approachable and ready to help. provision. Such changes will main- ics from the his PhD, Dr Stephen Potts Manager in Chemistry for many tain ongoing student satisfaction in University of looking years, providing transformative Dr Dewi Lewis a practical subject like chemistry. Edinburgh in into emerg- Stephen Potts support in both financial manage- Leadership Award for On top of this Dewi is committed 2016, where ing earth is a Senior ment and staff development. Outstanding Contribution As to college-wide work supporting he studied abundant Teaching Despite carrying a huge workload, Departmental Tutor, widening participation. Pickering materials Fellow in the she always finds time to help and Dewi has spearheaded initiatives to Winners of this award have guided emulsions. for photo- Department their colleagues and departments After a voltaics, of Chemistry, over the many hurdles thrown up by brief stint in industry, he moved at UCL in 2018 working under the and is one coronavirus, to the benefit of UCL to Lawrence
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