Nov 292012
 
Crystallography "In Our Time"

As part of the Bragg Centenary Celebrations, Melvyn Bragg and his guests discussed the history of crystallography, the study of crystals and their structure on “In Our Time” on BBC Radio 4. His guests were Prof. Judith A. K. Howard (University of Durham), Dr. Christopher Hammond (University of Leeds) and Prof. Mike Glazer … Read the rest

Nov 242012
 
Snowflakes at the Oxford Christmas Light Night

Every year, Oxford Inspires organises an evening of social and cultural events in the centre of Oxford following the theme of Christmas Lights.  A lot of the institutions within the city get involved, and this year that included Amber, who was invited to give a presentation at the Snowflake exhibition held at the History of Read the rest

Aug 202012
 
Mr. Rafal Wiewiora (Summer 2012)

An undergraduate at Pembroke, Rafal joined us for 5 weeks to carry out a summer research project between his 2nd and 3rd years. Rafal is working on the inclusion compounds of deoxycholic acid, particularly the nature of the host-guest binding and order-disorder phase transitions. When he’s not enjoying chemistry in the lab, Rafal can … Read the rest

Aug 102012
 
Summer Conferences - ACA Annual Meeting 2012, ECM 27 and Aperiodic 2012

Summer is conference season and the members of Chem. Cryst. have been on the road to the ACA in Boston and the ECM in Bergen.  In September, Kirsten will also be attending the 7th International Conference on Aperiodic Crystals, to be hosted in Cairns, Australia.  Contributions include:

David J. Watkin, Richard I. Cooper & … Read the rest

Aug 022012
 
ACA Student Lecturer Award

Congratulations to Karim Sutton, who has been awarded a Margaret C. Etter Student Lecturer Award at the recent American Crystallographic Association annual meeting in Boston.

He presented his recent research determining oxidation states in mixed-valent materials using tunable synchrotron radiation on Diamond beamline I19.

The awards were established to honour the memory of Professor … Read the rest

Apr 202012
 
BCA Spring Meeting 2012

The 2012 Meeting of the British Crystallographic Association was held at Warwick University.  Oxford was very well represented this year with Kirsten Christensen chairing the Programme Committee and prizes being awarded to Joe Paddison, Nick Funnell and Emma McKinley.

Other contributions from Oxford include:

Karim J. Sutton, Kirsten E. Christensen, Amber L. Thompson & … Read the rest

Nov 052011
 
EPSRC Equipment Sharing Grant Awarded

Our application to secure funds to refurbish our existing DSC and TGA analysis equipment has been successful.  Sample analysis by TGA/DSC allow detection and characterisation of solvent-loss and phase changes and, as such are complementary to solid-state X-ray crystallography.  The equipment was abandoned by a researcher leaving in 2007 and has not been operational since. … Read the rest

Oct 282011
 
Quasicrystals - Nobel Prize 2011

The Nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to Daniel Shechtman, from Technion – the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, for his discovery of the structure of quasicrystals. Until 1982, it was thought that only two-, three-, four- or six-fold rotational symmetry were possible, however Dr. Schechtman’s discovery changed all that when his electron … Read the rest