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Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry

 

See our videos

See our staff and students, below, talking about their work here in the department. Or view these videos, along with others, on the Cambridge Chemistry YouTube Channel.

Fun time lapse of BMS filling up for Dr Wothers lecture

Developing artificial leaves for carbon-neutral syngas production

Find out how Professor Erwin Reisner in collaboration is working with researchers in Chemical Engineering, Physics and the Henry Royce Institute to convert sunlight to sustainable fuels.

Professor Sir Shankar Balasubramanian, Falling Walls Foundation 2022

Breaking the wall to ultra-fast genome sequencing

Dr Peter Wothers' Cambridge Festival Lecture 2021

How the elements got their names

Gates Scholar Akhila Denduluri on why she chose Cambridge

 

Plants have Superpowers!

What gives this metallic blue fruit its colour?

Take a tour of our Department's social distancing measures

The Quest to Eliminate Plastic Waste

Watch how our researchers are working towards eliminating plastic waste and its effects on the environment.

 

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter

On Thursday 14 May, 2000 alumni and guests from around the world watched the second Cambridge Conversations webinar, which examined the numbers behind COVID-19.

 

Becoming a Computational Toxicologist

Dr Tim Allen, a postdoc in the Goodman research group, talks to the Royal Society of Chemistry about why he likes Computational Toxicology.

 

Wooden skyscrapers: Sustainable homes of the future?

Is engineered wood the building material of the future? Yes, say the researchers - including Professor Oren Scherman, Director of the Melville Lab for Polymer Synthesis here - who are exploring ways to modify it with 21st century technologies so it can help us build more renewable and energy-efficient buildings.

 

Producing fuel from plastic?

Taylor grew up close to the beach in Southern California but each time she went, the sand was littered with plastic. Here, the PhD student talks about her work on one potential solution: a technology called photoreforming that turns plastic waste into hydrogen fuel.

 

Celebrating Women in Chemistry

We themed a recent alumni event around Women in Chemistry, both to celebrate their achievements and to discuss the significant issues that still face women in science.

 

Supporting Chemistry Postgrads

As part of their training, our PhD students take part in a Showcase Week where they develop their science communication skills through presenting posters and giving public talks about their research. It's a challenge – but an important one, as they explain here.

 

The Alchemist's Apprentices

Dr Peter Wothers, Teaching Fellow in Physical Chemistry, explores the properties of fire, water, rock and air with students in these Key Stage 3/4 Chemistry BBC Class Clips.

 

Why Chemistry is NOT for everyone!

Only people who like fire, loud bangs and making their own ice cream without a freezer should become Chemists. Watch our video to discover if YOU could be one of them!

 

Chemistry of Health building goes up

This great video from Hideaway Studios shows our new Chemistry of Health building going up in just three minutes.

 

Becoming a postgrad Chemistry student

Find out what it's like becoming a postgraduate (PhD or MPhil) Chemistry student at Cambridge.

 

Grandmother with Alzheimer's inspired Syrian teen to seek Cambridge Chemistry place

Abdullah Kattineh battled power cuts, studying by candlelight and poring over chemistry papers on the tiny screen of a battered mobile phone, as he worked to win a place here to study Chemistry.

 

Copying iridescent colours from the natural world

"When light interacts with micro-structures on the surfaces of peacock feathers or butterflies, it causes some of the most vibrant colours in the natural world." Find out how. 

 

Explaining artificial photosynthesis - in Lego!

Using Lego, Reisner Lab researchers explain how they're mimicking Nature in their seach for ways to make 'green' fuels.

 

Bad Air Day?

Air pollution is the world’s largest single environmental health risk but new sensors developed here could help us understand and tackle the problem. 

 

The next DNA revolution begins here

Professors Sir Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman talk about how they developed next-generation DNA sequencing which has dramatically speeded up the sequencing process and cut its cost.

 

Healing the ozone hole to save our skin

Professor John Pyle and colleagues played a leading role in demonstrating the effect of man-made gases on the ozone layer, and the consequences for human health. Here they talk about this work.

 

Hear us in action

Here you can listen to recent podcasts and audio recordings.

On BBC Radio 4's The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread – a programme challenging products’ bold claims with scientific evidence – Professor Melinda Duer talks to science presenter Greg Foot about the science behind collagen face creams.

 

Dr Peter Wothers talks about the Periodic Table on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme (18/3/19 at 7:24am), and celebrates 150 au years with The Naked Scientists.

 

Our alumnus Sir Gregory Winter, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, describes how he came to invent a new class of drugs, currently worth $70 billion a year, in this episode of BBC Radio 4's The Life Scientific.

 

Student Amy King, who is conducting her PhD jointly between the Department of Chemistry and the British Antarctic Survey, tells the BBC about the difficulties of drilling ice-cores on the remote sub-Antarctic island of Bouvet while looking for particular organic compounds that could serve as a proxy for past sea-ice conditions.

 

Hear Professor John Pyle FRS tell the BBC World Service why there is good news about the ozone hole. (The interview starts 26:30 into the programme.) 

 

Hear Dr Alex Thom as he joins The Naked Scientists to talk about The Chemistry of Wine.

 

On BBC Radio 4, Professor Clare Grey discusses her work in developing next-generation batteries in The Big Battery Challenge, an episode of The Life Scientific.

 

With The Naked Scientists, Dr Gonçalo Bernardes talks about The Nerve Cells that Control Obesity.

 

Dame Carol Robinson describes her journey from leaving school at 16 to becoming the first female Professor of Chemistry at both Oxford and Cambridge University on BBC Radio 4's The Life Scientific.