Department of Chemistry

28 August 2013

The Berni J. Alder CECAM Prize recognizes exceptional contributions to the field of microscopic simulation of matter, and is the most prestigious European prize for computer simulations in condensed matter physics/chemistry, statistical physics and physical chemistry.

9 August 2013

The department is delighted to announce that Andreas Bender, George Booth and Lucy Colwell have been appointed as lecturers.

31 July 2013

Steve Ley has been awarded the 2013 French–British Prize by the Société Chimique de France.

29 July 2013

Andreas Bender, has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant worth about 1.5 million. EUR to work on the effects that combinations of chemicals may have in the human body.

29 July 2013

Tuomas Knowles, has been awarded a 1.5 million Euro Starting Grant from the European Research Council to work on studying the physical properties of heterogeneous protein complexes using microfluidic technologies.

29 July 2013

Shankar Balasubramanian has been awarded an ERC Advanced grant to study the existence and biological function of four-stranded structures called G-quadruplexes in human cells.

17 July 2013
Prof. Shankar Balasubramanian

Professor Shankar Balasubramanian has been awarded the Tetrahedron Prize 2013 for creativity in Organic & BioMedicinal Chemistry, as announced by the Executive Board of Editors and Elsevier, the Publisher of Tetrahedron Publications

19 June 2013

Sphere Fluidics, a spin-out founded in 2009 by Prof Chris Abell and Prof Wilhelm Huck, has won an Academic Enterprise Award for the best
European Life Sciences company.

19 June 2013

The Head of Department Professor Daan Frenkel has great pleasure in announcing the following Academic Promotions:

Promoted to Reader: Stuart Clarke, Tuomas Knowles

Promoted to Professor: Stuart Althorpe, David Spring

17 June 2013

The Department has received a Green Impact Bronze award, which is an environmental accreditation and awards scheme run by the National Union of Students

17 June 2013

Professor Ada E. Yorath (joint Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2009) visited the department to give a talk entitled "What was first: the genetic code or its products?".

6 June 2013

Amanda Maycock, Richard Turner and Jane Clarke collected the Athena SWAN award on behalf of the Department.

5 June 2013

AQDOT, a spinout company from the Department of Chemistry, has won the first RSC Emerging Technologies Competition for 2013.

4 June 2013

Gonçalo Bernardes, who recently started as a Royal Society University Research fellow, has been designated as the winner of the EFMC Prize for a Young Medicinal Chemist in Academia.

20 May 2013

Cambridge chemists have made a breakthrough in understanding the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Tuomas Knowles, Chris Dobson and colleagues have identified the pathway by which the aberrant proteins that cause Alzheimer’s are formed.

16 May 2013

The Department is delighted to announce that Emeritus Professor Jacek Klinowski has been made an Honorary Professor at his Alma Mater, Jagiellonian University in Krakow.

13 May 2013

The Novartis Chemistry Lectureship is awarded to scientists in recognition of outstanding contributions to organic and computational chemistry, including applications to biology.

11 May 2013

Joe Farman, the man who discovered the ozone hole, died on Saturday 11th May 2013.

8 May 2013

The Department of Chemistry is looking to support individuals of outstanding merit and potential who might wish to apply for a research fellowship. The deadline for the submission of Expressions of interests is 5pm, Wednesday, 8th May 2013.

 

1 May 2013

Professor Michele Vendruscolo has won the RSC Soft Matter and Biophysical Chemistry Award 2013.

30 April 2013

The Department of Chemistry is delighted to announce that they have been awarded an Athena SWAN Bronze award.

30 April 2013

Dr Peter Wothers has won the RSC Nyholm Prize for Education 2013

30 April 2013

Dr Oren Scherman has won the RSC Hickinbottom Award 2013.

30 April 2013

Dr Jonathan Goodman has won the RSC Bader Award 2013.

30 April 2013

Professor Matthew Gaunt has won the RSC Corday Morgan Medal 2013.

30 April 2013

Professor Jane Clarke FMedSci has won the RSC Interdisciplinary Prize 2013.

30 April 2013

Professor Steve Ley FRS has won the RSC Longstaff Prize

30 April 2013

Dr Rebecca Melen has won the RSC Dalton Young Researcher Award 2013.

30 April 2013

The Department of Chemistry is delighted to announce that Professor Chris Dobson FRS (Master of St John’s College) has been elected a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences.

25 April 2013

BP Day is the annual opportunity for students in the Materials RIG to stand up and showcase their work in short presentations (final year students) and posters penultimate year students).  19 talks representing 7 groups were all excellent presentations.

25 April 2013

A graduate student view of the Crick Memorial Talks…

23 April 2013

The theme of the lecture series is “Simulating Soft Matter: Not a Numbers Game”.

18 April 2013

Further BBSRC Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) studentships available - deadline 18 April 2013

15 April 2013

Student entrepreneur Jing Zhang wins Women Entrepreneur Award at the Rice Business Plan Competition

14 April 2013

Clare received this prestigious prize at the Experimental Nuclear Magnetic Resonance conference in Asilomar, Pacific Grove, California.

9 April 2013

The talks are entitled: “Reprogramming the genetic code” and “Imaging and controlling biological processes with molecular precision” will take place on the 10th/11th April at 4:00 in the Dyson Perrins lecture Theatre.

9 April 2013

Subtle quantum effects in the motion of molecules across a metal surface have been detected by Stephen Jenkins and postdoc Marco Sacchi, in collaboration with groups at the Cavendish and at Rutgers University in the US.

30 March 2013

The Department was sad to hear that Glen MacElroy passed away over Easter.

22 March 2013

Friday 22 March 4:00PM - 5:00PM

In this year’s Alex Hopkins Lecture, Professor David Phillips deals with the science of photo-medicine from a chemist’s point of view.

22 March 2013

The sixth lecture in memory of Alex Hopkins was held on the 22nd March 2013 in the Wolfson Lecture Theatre in the Department of Chemistry.

19 March 2013

A recent paper from Andreas Bender and PhD student Fazlin Mohd Fauzi has caused quite a bit of media interest, with news stories on BBC World, as well as newspaper stories in India and Malaysia.

18 March 2013

Members of The Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics within the Department have published two of the most read articles in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modelling for 2012.

16 March 2013

As part of the University of Cambridge Science Festival taking place in March, the Department of Chemistry will open its laboratories to the public

16 March 2013

As part of the University of Cambridge Science Festival that took place in March, the Department of Chemistry opened its laboratories to the public

15 March 2013

Professor Shankar Balasubramanian has been awarded the Heatley medal for 2014 by the Biochemical Society.

4 March 2013

We welcome Richard N. Zare as our 2013 LINNETT VISITING PROFESSOR

20 February 2013

The Department took part in the university-wide Switch Off Week (18-24th February 2013), in an attempt to reduce its energy usage and raise awareness of the issue.

20 January 2013

DNA G-quadruplexes have been of academic interest for a number of years, but no-one has proved they exist in human cells. Now, research in Shankar Balasubramanian’s group has proved they do – after more than a decade of trying.

26 December 2012

The Chemistry Department's teaching fellow Peter Wothers is to give the 2012 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on BBC 4 at 8pm on 26, 27 and 28 Dec. His talks will be entitled ‘The Modern Alchemist’. 

If you can't wait until then, you can find out the price of xenon by listening to Peter's recent appearance on BBC Radio 4.

12 December 2012

Yusuf Hamied, a chemistry alumnus and generous donor to the department and the university, has been made 2012 CNN-IBN Indian of the Year for business.

24 November 2012

A Memorial Service will be held on Saturday 24th November at 2.30 p.m in St Botolph's Parish Church (just across the road from St Catharine’s College) because of the large number of people expected to attend.

20 November 2012

Work from Jeremy Sanders’ lab has generated novel molecules that assemble and link together to tie themselves in knots.  The results, published in Science in November, represent a major step forward towards understanding the complex non-covalent chemistry that determines the assembly of larger molecules such as proteins.

17 October 2012

Head of department Daan Frenkel has been elected as an Associate Fellow of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, or TWAS. The honour has been conferred in recognition of his outstanding contribution to science and its promotion in the developing world.

11 October 2012

Professors. Robert J. Lekowitz of Duke University & Brian K. Kobilka of Stanford have been awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their studies of G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs).

8 October 2012

It is with great sadness that we announce that Professor Nicholas C. Handy FRS died on the 2nd of October 2012 after a short illness.

12 September 2012

Alessio Ciulli has been awarded a Starting Grant from the European Research Council. The five-year grant will support his group's research on druggability of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) within multisubunit and multidomain protein complexes.

10 September 2012

The Melville Laboratory for Polymer Synthesis is hosting a two day meeting of the Marco Group UK for young scientists.  For more information please click here.

24 August 2012

Reisner group discovers that a homogeneous cobalt catalyst evolves H2 electro- and photocatalytically under industrially relevant conditions: at room temperature, in pH-neutral water and in the presence of atmospheric O2.

17 August 2012

Chemistry from Oren Scherman’s group in the Melville Lab can give sustained release of drugs over a period of up to six months. This could have a huge impact on patients who need long-term injections, such as diabetics.

15 August 2012

The deadline for the submission of Expressions of interests is 5pm, Thursday 13th September 2012.

13 August 2012

Shankar Balasubramanian has been awarded a Senior Investigator grant by the Wellcome Trust.

9 July 2012

Applications are invited for the Herchel Smith Professorship of Organic Chemistry from individuals whose expertise falls within any area of organic chemistry, and who have an internationally leading track record of research.

2 July 2012

The inaugural Herchel Smith Lecture entittled Reading the Human Genome to be given by Dr Sydney Brenner today at 16:00 Wolfson Lecture Theatre.

EVERYONE WELCOME

12 June 2012

The Head of Department Professor Daan Frenkel has great pleasure in announcing the following Academic Promotions.

Promoted to Reader: Markus Kalberer, Oren Scherman.

Promoted to Professor: Jason Chin, Matt Gaunt.

17 May 2012

The deadline for the submission of Expressions of interests is May the 17th 2012.

(click for more info)

16 May 2012

The department is delighted to announce that Dominic Wright, Robert Best, Tuomas Knowles and Daan Frenkel have won awards and prizes from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

10 May 2012

The Department of Chemistry is delighted to announce that Professor Chris Abell has been elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

10 May 2012

The Department of Chemistry is delighted to announce that Professor Wilhelm Huck has been chosen as a member of the The Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

9 May 2012

Professors Jane Clarke and Shankar Balasubramanian have been elected members of the European Molecular Biological Organisation

8 May 2012

5.00pm 8th May Wolfson Lecture Theatre

Written and Directed by Carl Djerassi (Stanford University)

30 April 2012

Corporate Associates Junior Faculty Teaching Awards have been made to Dr Ian Baxendale and Dr Sally Boss in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the undergraduate teaching programme in the Department.

30 April 2012

The department’s Christian Doppler laboratory for Sustainable SynGas Chemistry was officially opened on 25 April.

26 April 2012

A new technique developed by Shankar Balasubramanian’s group, in collaboration with Wolf Reik’s group at the Babraham Institute, makes an important breakthrough for epigenetics research that has implications for stem cell research and the development of regenerative medicines.

20 April 2012

The Department of Chemistry is delighted to announce that Professors Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman have both been elected Fellows of the Royal Society.

3 April 2012

Suitable for chemistry graduates interested in completing a PhD Programme working at the interface of the Chemical and Biological Sciences.

23 March 2012

The Alex Hopkins memorial lecture will be given by Professor C. V. Robinson, F.R.S.

Friday 23rd March
4.00pm – 5.00pm
Wolfson Lecture Theatre
Department of Chemistry

17 March 2012

As part of the University of Cambridge Science Festival taking place in March, the Department of Chemistry will open its laboratories to the public

17 March 2012

Saturday 17th March saw the department flooded with over 2000 visitors who came to see for themselves how hard-working students are pushing back the frontiers of science.

13 March 2012

The Department welcomes Professor Dan Nocera, MIT, as the Lewis Lecturer for 2012.

8 March 2012

The annual BP Graduate Seminars were held in the department on the afternoon of 8th March.

5 March 2012

Deborah Longbottom has won one of this year’s Pilkington Teaching Prizes, which recognise outstanding contributions to teaching within the university.

27 February 2012

On 27th  and 28th February our department hosted a delegation of 8 academics from the Division of Chemistry and Biological Chemistry at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

22 February 2012

Professor Clare Grey recently took part in a Kavli Foundation online roundtable discussion on the future of electric cars, with two other experts in field. The aim was to highlight the main issues preventing the wider uptake of electric cars, and what is being done about them.

16 February 2012

Applications are invited for the post of Director of the Melville Laboratory for Polymer Synthesis, to take up appointment on 1 October 2012 or as soon as possible thereafter.

1 February 2012

Gareth Lloyd has been awarded the CCDC Chemical Crystallography Prize for Younger Scientists.

19 January 2012

Sir Alan Fersht is to be the next Master of Gonville and Caius College. He will take up the position in October.

21 December 2011

On Friday, December 16th 2011, the Cambridge Centre for Computational Materials Science was officially inaugurated.

19 December 2011

Cheminformatics: New prediction models for active ingredient properties.

16 December 2011

The agenda for the the Inauguration Ceremony for the Lennard-Jones Centre for Computational Materials Sciencein the Unilever Lecture Theatre (Chemistry)on Friday 16 December 2011 at 4.30pm is now published.

 

 

 

9 December 2011

Ruth Lynden-Bell has been awarded the Paul Walden Award for 2011 for her work on ionic liquids by the German Research Foundation.

6 December 2011

On Friday, December 16th, an inter-departmental Centre for Computational Materials Science will be inaugurated.

2 December 2011

An event at the House of Commons recognised the students who achieved the highest marks in the first Cambridge Chemistry Challenge.

2 December 2011

A new centre dedicated to research into innovative therapies for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases is being established in the chemistry department.

29 November 2011

Dominic Wright has been awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. The five-year grant will support his work on non-classical main group chemistry, supramolecular chemistry and catalysis.

31 October 2011

The Department is pleased to announce that Professor Christopher Dobson,  has been elected a Member of the Academia Europaea.

5 October 2011

To mark the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, an article by Neil Harris of the atmospheric section has been published on the university website

30 September 2011

Emeritus reader Peter Murray-Rust has won the 2012 Herman Skolnik award, presented by the American Chemical Society’s Division of Chemical Information.

22 September 2011

A new computer is now up and running, providing David Wales’ group with a 500 core computer cluster server to carry out calculations of how molecules and bulk systems self-organise.

30 August 2011

Jonathan Nitschke has won the Cram Lehn Pedersen prize for 2012. This prize is sponsored by the RSC journal ChemComm, and recognises significant, original and independent work in supramolecular chemistry by emerging investigators.

19 August 2011

Shankar Balasubramanian’s group has found a molecule, first isolated from bacteria, which can block a protein that causes breast cancer, giving an insight into how breast cancer can develop and spread.

10 August 2011

The Department of Chemistry has unveiled the new, cutting-edge Todd-Hamied Laboratory.  The laboratory will explore harnessing materials for energy storage and conversion in an effort to develop the next generation of batteries and fuel cells.

27 July 2011

The Department is pleased to announce that the 2011 Dalton Transactions European/African Lectureship has been awarded to Dr Jonathan Nitschke.

19 July 2011

The Department of Chemistry is delighted to announce that Professor Steve Ley has been awarded the Royal Medal for 2011 for his pioneering research in organic chemistry and outstanding contributions to the methodology of synthesis.

19 July 2011

The Department of Chemistry is delighted to announce that Professor Clare Grey has been awarded the Kavli Medal and Lecture 2011 for her pioneering work in the use of solid state NMR in the development of lithium-ion batteries.

18 July 2011

The Department of Chemistry congratulates Professor Jeremy Sanders on his appointment as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Institutional Affairs at the University of Cambridge from 1st  October 2011.

8 July 2011

The Department is pleased to announce that, in addition to Ali’s recent promotion to a Professorship, he has been awarded an EPSRC Leadership Fellowship.  These are senior Investigator awards of the Research Councils, and provide the opportunity for the PI to focus his time on research.

5 July 2011

The Department is very pleased to announce that the Dr David Spring has been given the Norman Heatley Award by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

The Norman Heatley Award is to recognise and promote the importance of inter- and multi-disciplinary research between chemistry and the life sciences through independent work.

25 June 2011

We are pleased to announce that the following have all been awarded Corporate Associates Prizes for excellence in Practical Class Demonstration:

Anna Andreou, Elliot Bayle, Beatrice Collins, Pillippa Cranwell,Jake Goodwin-Tindal, Jo Haywood, Tanya Hutter, Sam Jones, David Ponting, Tom Scrase, Jonathan Skelton and Francesca Stokes

10 June 2011

The Department of Chemistry is pleased to be able to announce that  Dr Ali Alavi has been promoted to Professor and that Drs Melinda Duer, Jonathan Nitschke and David Spring have been promoted to Readers.

7 June 2011

The Department is very pleased to be able to announce that Dr Peter Wothers has been awarded the RSC President’s Award for his outstanding contribution to public outreach in the chemical sciences.

31 May 2011

Expressions of Interest are requested by 31st May.

20 May 2011

The Department is delighted to be able to announce that Clare has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

18 May 2011

Newnham College invites applications from women and men for Associate  Lectureships in Physical Sciences.

10 May 2011

The Department of Chemistry is  pleased to announce that Professor Daan Frenkel has been awarded the Joseph Hirschfelder Prize 2011-2012, University of Wisconsin

10 May 2011

Congratulations to Andreas Bender, Lecturer for Molecular Informatics at the Department of Chemistry, receives the Innovation Prize of the German Pharmaceutical and Chemical Societies (DPhG and GDCh) 2011.

In addition Andreas has also won the 4th annual MGMS Silver Jubilee Prize.

9 May 2011

The Department will host lectures by three RSC Organic prize winners

6 May 2011

Congratulations to Jonathan Nitschke on the award of a Corday-Morgan Medal and to Tomislav Friscic for the Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize for 2011.

11 April 2011

We welcome William A. Eaton as our 2011 Todd Professor

25 November 2010

It is with regret that we record the death of Mr Eric Walters.   more...

8 November 2010

This will take place at 12.00 Noon, Monday 15th November, in the Large Chapel, Cambridge City Crematorium, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0JJ, and will be followed by a reception at Churchill College, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0DS

3 November 2010
Picture of Professor Dudley Williams

It is with great regret that we announce that Professor Dudley Williams FRS died  after a short illness.

20 September 2010

Our Department Website has been redesigned to provide the capability to present information from more sources.

7 July 2010

Dr Erwin Reisner has been appointed as Inorganic Lecturer (Materials, Energy and Sustainability) with a start date of 1 October 2010.

28 June 2010
27 May 2010
Julian Huppert MP

Julian Huppert, who studied for his PhD in the Department of Chemistry, and subsequently worked as a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in the Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics within the department has been elected as the Member of Parliament for Cambridge.

6 May 2010
Professor Daan Frenkel

Professor Daan Frenkel has been awarded the RSC Soft Matter & Biophysical Chemistry Award for 2010. The citation refers to his work on “the development and application of computational methods that have transformed our understanding of soft and biomolecular materials”.

19 March 2010
Shankar Balasubramanian

Professor Shankar Balasubramanian has been named as the BBSRC Innovator of the Year, winning £10,000 in recognition of his work on Solexa sequencing, the high speed genome sequencing technology that is revolutionising bioscience.