Latest updates

Having only recently celebrated her doctorate, Laura had more good news when she landed a job at the multinational company Johnson Matthey.

Congratulations again!

On the 19th of September Laura successfully passed her PhD viva, after an exam with Steve Archibald (Hull). Laura’s mighty purple tome was entitled Air-Stable Fluorescent Primary Phosphines And Their Potential Applications As Precursors For Disease Imaging Agents. Laura won several prizes during her postgraduate studies notably the SET Silver Prize for Chemistry at the 2012 Research Showcase event at the Houses of Parliament. She also published a nice article in Angewandte Chemie on Air-Stable, Highly Fluorescent Primary Phosphines.

Congratulations Laura!

Arne Ficks completed his PhD in the School of Chemistry working with Dr Lee J. Higham. He studied chemistry at the University of Göttingen, Germany, where he obtained his Diplom (MSc equivalent degree) in June 2009 under the supervision of Prof Franc Meyer. He joined the research group of Dr Lee J. Higham at Newcastle University in October 2009 to work on the applications of primary phosphines in asymmetric catalysis.

The results of his research have been published in a number of scientific journals (see below — the RSC journal articles are available as open access) and Arne presented his results at a number of international conferences, including the American Chemical Society’s Anaheim conference, USA.

1. http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2011/cc/c1cc12440d
2. http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/dt/c2dt12214f
3. https://www.thieme-connect.com/ejournals/abstract/10.1055/s-0032-1316825
4. http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2013/dt/c3dt50482d

Laura Davies, 24, a third year PhD student at Newcastle University, originally hailing from Prudhoe, won Silver at a competition in the House of Commons, for the excellence of her chemistry research last week, walking away with a £2,000 prize.

Laura presented her chemistry research to dozens of politicians, including Newcastle MP Chi Onwurah, and a panel of expert judges, as part of the poster competition SET for Britain, on Monday 12 March.

Her research, undertaken as part of Dr Lee Higham’s research team, involves using phosphine chemistry to create new applications in disease imaging, was judged against 29 other shortlisted researchers’ work. Laura’s work has recently been published in one of the top chemistry journals, Angewandte Chemie.

Laura said, “I’m very proud to have won and to be promoting chemistry in the North East. I’d like to thank Chi Onwurah for visiting me at the competition and for her support and interest.”

SET for Britain is a competition in the House of Commons which involves researchers displaying posters of their work to panels of expert judges and politicians. Further information ia available here.

The event aims to help politicians understand more about the UK’s thriving science and engineering base and rewards some of the strongest scientific and engineering research being undertaken in the UK.

Andrew Miller MP, Chairman of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, said, “This annual competition is an important date in the parliamentary calendar because it gives MPs an opportunity to speak to a wide range of the country’s best young researchers.

“These early career scientists are the architects of our future and SET for Britain is politicians’ best opportunity to meet them and understand their work.”

The research group of Dr Lee J. Higham has attracted further funding in the form of an EPSRC Knowledge Transfer Award (KTA), in collaboration with High Force Research Ltd, a company which specialises in chemical synthesis and R&D for the pharmaceutical, biotech and fine chemicals industries. This form of competitive financing is designed to assist in the commercialisation of existing EPSRC-funded research (generated from the EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellowship), and in this instance will take the form of a novel one year MPhil Studentship. Congratulations are due to Jenny Wallis (pictured), who will rejoin the LJH team after both a successful Johnson Matthey-sponsored Summer Studentship and a highly-productive MChem project on the synthesis of bidentate primary phosphines.

Jenny will spend nine months in the LJH group working on novel phosphorus-containing compounds with potential medicinal applications, before spending the final three months at the laboratories of HFR itself, a dynamic company based in the region, who will generously co-sponsor the award.