Chemistry staff and PGR students -alongside a selection of industrial sponsors – came together on Wednesday 11th September to present and celebrate the research within the Department.

The day consisted of a series of talks (delivered by both staff and students) on their current research endeavours, which ranged from “Investigating local structure in disordered rocksalt cathode materials” to “Solid State NMR explorations of protein-lipid interactions in cardiovascular disease”. There were representatives from all five of the Department’s research groups, presenting their findings to their peers on the latest advancements in electrochemistry, spectroscopy, computational, organic, and inorganic chemistry. In addition to these presentations, a series of flash talks were also delivered by several of the Department’s PhD students. During the course of the day, posters created by PhD students and departmental researchers were also available for attendees to examine.

A number of industrial sponsors - including precision instrument manufacturers Shimadzu and Advion-Interchim, and industrial equipment supplier Buchi – were present throughout the event with stalls displaying their equipment services.

The industrial sponsors invited to the event reaped a great deal of benefit from it, with representative from Shimadzu Dr Dhruv Trivedi stating: “I found the PGR and Staff Conference highly enjoyable to attend. The organisation was fantastic, and the posters as well as presentations were inspiring. There is most definitely groundbreaking research taking place [at Lancaster]!”

Several of these sponsors also contributed monetary prizes for the friendly internal competition that took place amongst the participants of the day. The winners of each category were as follows:

• Oral presentations from 3rd year PhD students – (sponsored by Shimadzu)
• Chris Cook 
• Oral presentation from PDRAs – (sponsored by Royal Society of Chemistry)
• Dr Daniel Smith
• Flash presentations from 1st year PhD students (sponsored by Advion-Interchim)
• Paula Miquel Fosco
• Poster competition from 2nd year PhD students – (sponsored by Shimadzu)
• Kevin Bucher

On the success of the day, Director of Research Professor John Griffin remarked: “It was great to see a snapshot of the diverse research taking place in the Department of Chemistry and the talks really demonstrated how students, post-docs and staff are working on innovative solutions to real-world challenges. I am already looking forward to next year’s conference to catch up with progress.”

Winner of the PDRA presentation category Dr Daniel Smith added:” The Chemistry Department Staff and PGR Research Conference was a hugely enjoyable exhibition of the wide range of research undertaken in the Department - electrochemistry, batteries, materials, computational, biochemical, analytical, and more. Speakers were clearly enjoying the opportunity to enthuse the audience with their work and, from discussions with them, industry exhibitors were made to feel as valued contributors to the event. My thanks to the organisers!”