News 2016
Recent News (Click here for news archive)
December 2016
Sharon, Daniel, Giulia, Rob, Joe, Suzi and Richard attended the IOP BRSG Christmas Meeting and the NMRDG Christmas Meeting in London. Daniel gave a talk entitled “13C NMR of Cu(II)-based MOFs: Acquisition, assignment and applications” at the BRSG Meeting, while Sharon chaired the NMRDG event.
Andrew and Giulia gave talks on their thesis work in the School postgraduate symposium. Andrew talked about his studies using NMR to study industrial catalysts, and Giuila described her work on ADOR-able zeolites and MOFs. Arantxa and Dave presented posters at the same event.
November 2016
The group welcomes a new PhD student this week, Bonifac Legrady from Hungary. Bonifac will be continuing the work Andrew started with Sasol, using NMR to look at catalysts. More information on Bonifac will appear soon.
Congratulations to Ashbrook group members Paula Sanz Camacho and Henri Colaux, who both graduated this month. Paula is now working in France and Henri in Japan.
October 2016
A review entitled “Exploiting NMR Spectroscopy for the Study of Disorder in Solids” by Rob, Daniel and Sharon was accepted this month in International Reviews in Physical Chemistry. Congratulations!
Joe and Giulia have spent time at the UK 850 MHz facility this month, carrying out experiments on gallium-based oxides and metal-organic frameworks.
September 2016
The group welcomes a number of new members this month. Richard Parke rejoins the group to start PhD work funded by Cemex. Richard completed his fourth-year undergraduate project two years ago, supervised jointly by Daniel and Sharon. Also arriving this month is Zhipeng Ke (Aaron) who is completing a MPhil under the supervision of Sharon and Professor Michael Bühl. The group is also joined by three new project students - Elliott Bruce who will work alongside Joe on 17O enrichment of MOFs, Freddie Mack who will work with Daniel and Sharon on NMR of paramagnetic oximes, and Daniel Twist who will work with Dave and Rob using structure searching approaches. Click here for more information on the new group members.
Scott left the group this month after completing both a PhD and a one year EPSRC PhD fellowship extension. We wish him well for the future, but are looking forward to less drama!
Rob and Dave attended the SMARTER 5 conference in Bayreuth, Germany this month. Dave gave a talk about our recent work on structure searching using AIRSS, and Rob presented a poster describing computational work on pyrochlores.
BP visited St Andrews to talk to Suzi, Sharon and collaborator Professor Paul Wright. Suzi and PhD students David Price from the Wright group gave an update of their work.
Also this month, Nasima travelled to Warwick to use the 850 MHz High-Field Facility, performing some work on calcite.
Published this month is work on paramagnetic oximes by Sharon and Daniel, with collaborator Professor Michael Bühl. See the Publications page for more information.
August 2016
Arantxa’s paper, Phase Composition and Disorder in La2(Sn,Ti)2O7 Ceramics: New Insights from NMR Crystallography, written with Dave, Scott and collaborator Professor Karl Whittle (University of Liverpool), was accepted for publication in J. Phys. Chem. C this month. See the Publications page for more details. Congratulations!
Sharon gave a plenary lecture at the “Future of Chemical Physics” conference, organised by the AIP, in Oxford. She told the audience about the state-of-the-art and future challenges in solid-state NMR. The talks covered all aspects of Chemical Physics and Physical Chemistry. While in Oxford, she was able to meet up with collaborator, Jonathan Yates.
Daniel attended the annual meeting of the Scottish NMR User’s Group (SNUG) at Firbush, where he gave a talk about solid-state NMR in Scotland.
Sharon attended an event at the Scottish Parliament entitled “Frontier Women – where are all the women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)?”. She was also able to publicise her recent “Academic Women Now” booklet (written with co-authors from St Andrews, Ineke de Moortel and Aileen Fyfe).
July 2016
Past Ashbrook group member Martin Peel got married in St Andrews this month, an event attended by Sharon, Daniel and Scott. The group wish Martin and Jason a very happy future together.
Zach finished his summer project this month, but will stay in St Andrews to finish the last year of his degree. Zach spent the summer working alongside Giulia on 17O enrichment of metal-organic frameworks.
Sharon, Scott, Rob, Joe, Giulia and Andrew attended the Rocky Mountains Conference for Magnetic Resonance in Breckenridge, Colorado US this month. Rob gave his first conference talk (Exploring Wadsleyite Hydration by Combining AIRSS and NMR Spectroscopy). Scott, Joe, Giulia and Andrew all presented posters on their latest work. Sharon gave a talk at the pre-conference Bruker Users Meeting on High-Resolution NMR of Inorganic Solids: Metal-Organic Frameworks.
A paper by Paula, Sharon, Daniel and Dave (along with Professor Derek Woollins) was accepted for publication in Inorganic Chemistry this week. The work describes the observation of unusual homonuclear intermolecular through-space J couplings in organochalcogen systems. The work was selected as Editors’ choice and will appear on the front cover of the journal later on in the year.
Daniel and Sharon attended EUORMAR in Aarhus, Denmark this month. Sharon gave a talk Arantxa and Rob’s recent work on pyochlores (Investigating Composition, Structure and Disorder in Ceramics for Waste Encapsulation), and Daniel presented a poster on the group’s work on investigating internuclear through-space J couplings. At the meeting, Sharon was elected onto the AMPERE Board of Trustees.
Other visitors to St Andrews this month included collaborator Professor Karl Whittle (University of Liverpool) and Professor Peter Hore (University of Oxford), who helped to supervise Sharon during her DPhil. Peter gave an excellent talk on how birds navigate using the Earth’s magnetic field.
June 2016
Congratulations to Paula and Henri who both successfully defended their PhD theses this month!
Congratulations also to Scott who graduated with his PhD thesis on 22nd June, and also to project students Charlotte (2015-16) and Richard (2014-15), who graduated with MChem degrees on the same day.
Sharon (along with co-authors from St Andrews, Ineke de Moortel and Aileen Fyfe) launched the “Academic Women Now” booklet at the RSE. The speakers at the event included Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Professor Alice Brown and Professor Lesley Yellowlees. The booklet describes the experiences and pathways through academia of mid-career women in Scotland. The academics featured were all members of the RSE Young Academy of Scotland. More information on the event can be found here, and a copy of the booklet downloaded here.
All members of the group attended the Sixth Annual Meeting of the St Andrews Centre for Magnetic Resonance, sponsored by Bruker. 
The event comprised a poster session, a day of talks on NMR, EPR and computation and a conference dinner. Dave gave a talk on his recent work with Rob on using AIRSS to predict the structure of hydrous minerals, and Andrew a talk on his recent DNP work with SASOL. Nasima, Scott, Giulia, Rob, Joe, Arantxa, Suzi, Charlotte and Zach all presented posters. Congratulations go to Charlotte (who won first prize) and Arantxa (who won second prize) for their posters.
Zach returned to the group for a six week summer project to extend his work on 17O NMR of MOFs.
Scott was involved in organising the RSC Early Career Symposium held in Strathclyde this month. This Symposium brought early-career chemists from all disciplines and sectors together to connect the next generation of leaders in the chemical sciences, and consisted of four parallel sessions spread over two days. Delegates saw the latest advances in chemical research, learned from emerging leaders in the field and networked with their peers in a fun and relaxed environment.
May 2016
Sharon was a plenary lecture at a Zing Conference in Varna, Bulgaria this month (http://www.zingconferences.com/solid-state-nmr/). Her lecture “Exploiting DFT Calculations to Investigate Disorder in Inorganic Solids” reviewed a number of different computational approaches used in the group to model disordered solids.
The group said goodbye to Charlotte and Zach who completed their undergraduate projects this month. After a brief break for exams, Zach will be returning at the end of this month for a summer project, while Charlotte will be graduating.
Giulia visited the UK DNP MAS NMR Facility at the University of Nottingham this month to carry out some 17O experiments on ADORable zeolites samples. Further information on the facility can be found here (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/dnpnmr/home.aspx)
April 2016
The group attended the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility 2016 Annual Symposium in Warwick this month. Giulia gave a talk about her work entitled “Exploiting Isotopic Enrichment to Understand Microporous Solids”.
Dave and Sharon’s invited feature article “Combining solid-state NMR spectroscopy with first-principles calculations – a guide to NMR crystallography” was accepted in Chem. Commun. this month. The article describes recent advances in the application of first-principles calculations of NMR parameters to periodic systems and their practical implementation.
Sharon gave a talk (“High-Resolution NMR of Inorganic Solids: Metal-Organic Frameworks”) at a joint Bonn/St Andrews Meeting on Chemistry at Spin Centres.
Lyndon Emsley visited St Andrews this month as part of his 2015 RSC Bourke Award lecture Tour. Lyndon gave a great talk describing recent advances in DNP and the promise this technique offers for solid-state NMR. 
Sharon visited the University of Nottingham (as part of her RSC Corday-Morgan Prize tour) this month to give a seminars. She talked about the recent work in the group using DFT calculations and random structure searching to study disordered materials.
March 2016
Congratulations to Sharon, who was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) this month. This is awarded to people who have attained high international standing in their discipline. See here for more details on the RSE.
Sharon visited Keele University (as part of her RSC Corday-Morgan Prize tour) and the University of Reading this month to give seminars. She talked about the recent work in the group using random structure searching.
Rob and Dave’s paper (Hunting for Hydrogen: Random Structure Searching and Prediction of NMR Parameters of Hydrous Wadsleyite) using ab initio random structure searching to look at the hydration of high-pressure minerals, with collaborators Chris Pickard, Andrew Berry and John Griffin, has been accepted for publication in Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. Congratulations!
Also in press is a Specialist Periodical Reports on “NMR spectroscopy of minerals and allied materials”, written by Daniel and Sharon for the RSC. This will appear in “Nuclear Magnetic Resonance: Volume 45”.
Congratulations to project students Charlotte and Zach who gave their honours projects talks this month. Zach talked about his work on 17O enrichment of MOFs and Charlotte talked about NMR of Cu-based paramagnetic MOFs. Both gave excellent presentations. 
Giulia and Daniel visited the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility this month to continue work on 17O-enriched zeolites with collaborator Russell Morris.
February 2016
Sharon visited the University of Liverpool this month to give a seminar on our recent work combining experiment and calculation to study disorder in minerals. She met up with collaborators Karl Whittle and Fred Blanc during her visit.
January 2016
From 2016, Sharon will take over as Chairperson for the RSC NMR Discussion Group. Information on the group, their meetings and activities can be found here.
The group attended the Advanced Materials conference in St Andrews, and presented posters on their recent work. Also this month, Sharon gave a talk on “Local structure and disorder in solids: Combining experiment and calculation” at a Scottish HPC meeting.
Nasima visited the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility this month to continue her work with Andrew Berry on high-pressure silicate glasses.
Sharon (with co-authors from St Andrews, Ineke de Moortel and Aileen Fyfe) launched the “Academic Women Now” booklet at the RSE. The booklet describes the experiences and pathways through academia of mid-career women in Scotland. The academics featured were all members of the RSE Young Academy of Scotland. More information on the event can be found here, and a copy of the booklet downloaded here.
The UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility, based at the University of Warwick is now an EPSRC mid-range facility from January 2015.
See the facility website here for more details on how to apply for time.
