Recent News    (Click here for news archive)

Congratulations to Scott who passed his viva this month, with examiners Dr Filip Wormald and Dr Laurent Delevoye!

Andrew spent time with Professor Lyndon Emsley in Lausanne this month, exploring the use of DNP on his catalytic materials. Thanks to Lyndon and his group for all the help in these challenging and tricky experiments.

Sharon took over as the Chair of the RSC NMR Discussion Group this month for the 2016-2018 period. See the group website (http://www.nmrdg.org.uk) for more information on their activities.

The group Christmas party took place at the Vine Leaf this month. Thanks to the staff for a great meal and an enjoyable night.

Sharon attended the RSC AGM, firstly as a representative of the Tayside Local Section, and also to receive her Corday-Morgan award at the evening awards dinner. She was given the award for her work on “the structure of materials combining solid-state NMR spectroscopy and first-principles calculations”.

Also this month, Sharon gave her University inaugural lecture, entitled “Spins and Spinning: Understanding materials using solid-state NMR”. In addition to colleagues from chemistry and around the university, the event was also attended by Professor Stephen Wimperis (DPhil supervisor) and ex group member Dr John Griffin, both of whom are now at Lancaster University.

Scott gave a talk in the departmental computational seminar series this month, describing his thesis work on microporous materials.

October 2015

Sharon gave a talk at the Royal Society Regional Meeting held in St Andrew on her experiences as a research fellow.

Giulia and Daniel enjoyed a successful visit to the UK 850 MHz NMR facility this month to carry out 17O NMR experiments on ADORable zeolites.

Some of the group attended the Alpine NMR conference in Chamonix this month. Sharon was on the scientific committee of the conference and chaired one of the sessions, Daniel gave a talk about our recent work on GaPO frameworks, and Scott, Paula, Giulia and Rob presented posters on their work. Some conference photos can be seen here.

Sharon has been awarded a prestigious Wolfson Merit Award, jointly funded by the Royal Society and the Wolfson Foundation. See https://royalsociety.org/news/2015/10/wolfson-merit-awards/ for further details

The group welcomes new members this month, including Suzi Pugh a new PhD student who is sponsored by BP, and two undergraduate projects students - Zachary Davis, working with Sharon and Charlotte Sansome, who will work with Sharon and Daniel. Click on their names for more information.

Sharon gave a keynote lecture at the International Society of Magnetic Resonance (ISMAR) conference in Shanghai in August, entitled “Investigating Phase Composition, Structure and Disorder in Pyrochlore-Based Ceramics”.

Also this month, Dave, Rob, Arantxa and Joe attended the CASTEP workshop in Oxford.

Former postdoc John Griffin visited the group this month to talk about ongoing collaborations in NMR of minerals. John will be starting a new position at the University of Lancaster in September - we wish him good luck in his new job.

Lot of goodbyes this month....

July 2015

Sharon attended a Symposium on NMR Applications in Industry in Manchester this month, where she gave a talk entitled “Using NMR Spectroscopy and First-Principles Calculations to Investigate in Inorganic Solids”, describing some of our recent work on high-pressure minerals and ceramics.

Nasima and Eleanor visited the 850 facility to carry out 71Ga experiments on high-pressure glass melts.

Dr Laurent Delevoye from Lille visited the group this month, to talk about work on multi-pulse decoupling.

June 2015

All of the group attended the Fifth Annual Meeting of the St Andrews Centre for Magnetic Resonance this month, sponsored by Bruker. The event comprised a poster session, a day of talks on NMR, EPR and computation and a conference dinner. Paula and Daniel gave talks on their recent work on unusual couplings in organochalcogen compounds and NMR of microporous metallophosphates. Nasima, Henri, Giulia, Andrew, Arantxa, Joe and Rob presented posters.

In other conference news, Nasima, Henri, Giulia, Andrew, Arantxa and Joe presented posters at the RSC NMR-DG postgraduate meeting in  Manchester. Congratulations to Giulia who won the poster prize, and is now invited to give a talk on her work at the upcoming Anglo-german NMR meeting in Darmstadt. Congratulations also to Paula, who gave an excellent talk on her exciting work on unusual through-space couplings in organochalcogenide compounds. Daniel also attended the associated RSC UK NMR facility Manager’s meeting.

Rob and Dave attended the ScotCHEM Computational Chemistry Meeting in Glasgow. they presented a poster on the work they have been doing using structure searching techniques in high-pressure minerals.

Collaborator Jonathan Yates visited the group this month, and also attended the CMR conference (where he gave a talk about the calculation of NMR parameters using periodic approaches). Jonathan met with Sharon, Paula, Dave, Daniel,  Arantxa, Rob and Scott during a busy few days!

Congratulations to Martin Peel who graduated this month for his PhD! Also graduating was undergraduate project student Martin Stanford and previous project student Hanna Bostrom, both of whom achieved first-class MChem degrees.

May 2015

Sharon has won the 2015 RSC Corday-Morgan Prize for the most meritorious contributions to Chemistry, for her work on “to the structure of materials combining solid-state NMR spectroscopy and first-principles calculations”. Further details can be found here. She will be presented with the award at a ceremony in November. Information on all of the RSC Prize winners this year can be found here.

Eleanor Mare, a PhD student from the Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University is visiting the group this summer. Eleanor is working on NMR of high-pressure glasses with Nasima. See here for more information about Eleanor.

Also this month Henri attended the GERM (Groupe d'Étude de Résonnance Magnétique) annual conference in Sète, in the south of France, where he gave a talk a presented a poster entitled “entitled “The FAM-N Method for Signal Improvement in MQMAS”. Details can be found here: http://thcgerm.free.fr/ .

After the conference, Henri went to Lille, in the north of France, to perform 25Mg and 39K experiments on the 800 MHz spectrometer as part of a TGIR-RMN project. Experiments were performed with the help of Julien Trébosc.

Two new probes have been installed this month - a 1.9 mm triple resonance HXY probe on the 600 and a 4 mm low-γ probe on the 400.

April 2015

Paula and Daniel’s paper was accepted as a communication in J. Am. Chem. Soc. this month. The work describes the experimental observation of unusual intermolecular “through-space” Se-P J couplings in new organochalcogen heterocycles. The paper can be accessed here. Congratulations! Also published in J. Organomet. Chem. this month is work by Daniel and Sharon with collaborator Dr Andrews Burrows from Bath.

Sharon spoke at the “Breaking the Glass Ceiling: A Conversation with Women in Academia” event, held at the Byre theatre in St Andrews on 16th April. The speakers included Professor Dame Jinty Nelson, Professor Ottoline Leyser, Dame Anne Pringle, Catherine Stihler (Rector) and five female professors from St Andrews - Ineke de Moortel, Frances Andrews, Susan Sellars, Verity Brown and Sharon.

Undergraduate project students Martin and Richard handed in their theses and completed their vivas this month. We wish them good luck with the upcoming exams!

The Ashbrook group was visited by Professor Steve Wimperis from Glasgow this month. Steve came to talk to Sharon, Daniel and Henri about a number of ongoing collaborations.

March 2015

Dr Laurent Le Polles from Rennes has started a 6 month sabbatical in St Andrews. Laurent will work with the group on a number of projects, including measuring CSAs and the study of some more unusual NMR nuclei.

The group has been joined by a new post-doctoral fellow - Dr David McKay from Edinburgh. Dave will be using his considerable prior computational expertise in the calculation of J couplings and the implementation of AIRSS calculations, with initial applications in our work on 17O NMR. See the group members page for more details soon.

Work by Martin M, Scott and Rob (entitled “New Insights into Phase Distribution, Phase Composition and Disorder in Y2(Zr,Sn)2O7 Ceramics from NMR Spectroscopy”) has been accepted for publication in Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. this month. This paper combines work from Martin’s PhD thesis, with additional analysis carried out by Rob in his undergraduate project last year. Also published this month in Crystal Growth and Design was some of Scott’s work  on Sc MOFs, with Paul Wright and Javier Cepeda. See the Publications page.

Daniel and Sharon attended the UK-Japan Royal Society meeting on Microporous Framework Materials, Chichley House this month. Daniel presented a poster on our work on NMR of guest-loaded paramagnetic MOFs, while Sharon gave a talk entitled “Multinuclear NMR Spectroscopy and First-Principles Calculations for the Study of Microporous Phosphate Frameworks”, detailing a range of work over this last few years with Paul Wright and Richard Walton.

Dave attended the CASTEP workshop held in Oxford this month, while the rest of the group attended the UK High-Field Solid-State NMR Symposium held in Warwick. Henri gave a talk at this symposium on his work on the use of FAM-N composite pulse in MQMAS experiments.

February 2015

New PhD student Joseph Hooper has joined the group this month. Joe is from Lancashire and will be working on 17O NMR of framework materials.

January 2015

At the start of the year, Sharon took over (from Professor Michael Buhl) as Director of the St Andrews Centre for Magnetic Resonance. The annual meeting of the centre is scheduled for Monday 8th June 2015 (see http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/cmr/index.html) for more details.

Congratulations to Martin Peel, who completed his PhD this month! Martin is now working in the finance sector.