BCA Spring meeting

Hamish, Pat and Harry attended the British Crystallographic Association (BCA) Spring Meeting in Leeds, 25-28 March 2024, where a lot of exciting things happened!

Harry gave a talk about his PhD work, entitled “Driving Forces in the Phase Behaviour of MDABCO-based Ferroelectric Perovskites“, and Pat gave a talk about the group’s work on “Investigations of ZIF Crystallisation Mechanisms“.

After organising part of the meeting programme as one of the representatives of the Chemical Crystallography Group (CCG), Hamish was elected to be the Chair of the CCG Committee of the BCA, a post he will hold for the next three years.

Most excitingly, it was announced at the meeting that Pat has won the 2024 CCG-CCDC Prize for Younger Scientists, which is awarded each year “to a younger scientist who has performed original research in the field of chemical crystallography or the application of crystallographic information to structural chemistry”.

Well done on the talks, Harry and Pat, and congratulations Pat on the CCG-CCDC Prize!

MSci project end

Our fourth-year MSci students, Will and Byron have handed in their theses and today we had a few drinks to celebrate. It seemed like only a short time ago they joined us but since October they’ve both done some really interesting experiments on materials formation, and uncovered some surprising facts about metal-organic frameworks and hybrid perovskites! Congratulations and good luck for the rest of the year (and beyond!), Byron and Will!

New MSci students start

The group has been joined by two new MSci students for their fourth-year research projects! Byron Read will be investigating the formation of hybrid perovskites, with a nod towards ionic conductivity, and Will Norman will be investigating the formation of metal-organic frameworks, comparing the effects of different components in the reactions. Welcome to the group, Byron (r) and Will (l)!