Archive for the ‘Chemistry’ Category
-
August 20th, 2010
Fall ACS and COMS2010
I’m heading off to the States next week to spend a couple of days at the Fall ACS meeting in Boston, followed by a brief stop in New Mexico for this year’s COMS event (where I’ll be presenting a short paper).
Drop me a line if you are attending either event and want to meet up for a chat about our latest programmes.
-
July 21st, 2010
Kavli lectureship article published
Last year Chad Mirkin of Northwestern was awarded the 2009 Kavli prize for his work in the field of nanoscience. He delivered his award lecture at the 2009 Fall MRS meeting in Boston, and has now published an article based on the lecture in this month’s MRS Bulletin. It’s well worth a look as it covers much of his group’s work using gold nanoparticles, and how this research is moving on to deliver novel applications in all areas of materials science.
-
July 12th, 2010
Faraday discussions: Gold
We are delighted to see that the highly regarded series of ‘Faraday Discussion’ events, organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry, will be running a meeting next year focussing on the ever expanding field of gold catalysis. The event will be held in Cardiff in early July 2011, so make a note in your diaries. We will post updates and more details on this exciting meeting as they are published.
-
June 25th, 2010
Final day – SERS, lobsters and many new friends
Having never attended a Gordon conference before, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect – they are generally considered to be as good as it gets, and my expectations were high. I wasn’t disappointed! It really was an excellent meeting, bringing together many famous faces and rising stars of the field. But best of all was the student/postdoc involvement – every poster session had a real buzz to it, and I know for a fact some exciting collaborations were formed.
Teri Odom (Northwestern) and Michael Natan (Oxonica) deserve a mention at this point – they conceived the event, and undoubtedly spent countless hours organising, planning, promoting and generally worrying about it. But it paid off, and every single person I spoke with said how much they thought of the meeting.
A quirky (and I think very sensible) part of the final day was spent discussing the next meeting. The first question was ‘should there be one?’ and the response to this was a unanimous ‘yes’. The location is likely to be the USA again (with Europe as a possibility). Michael becomes the chair, and Francesco Stellacci of MIT was voted into the vice chair position. We will work with Michael to ensure GOLD2012 and GRC2012 do not clash.
Scientifically, the day kicked of with talks under the banner of ‘Nanoparticles, the environment and energy’. Consideration was first given to safety, with presentations from Jim Hutchinson and Catherine Murphy. Plasmonics presentations followed with Stephan Link and Sang-Hyan Oh talking. The evening session focused exclusively on single molecule sensing and SERS, much of which was well beyond me scientifically but it provoked some great debate in the lecture theatre.
The final meal was pretty special too – keeping with the old GRC North Eastern tradition whole lobsters were served. They were so delicious a few attendees were caught going back for seconds, however I will of course never name names… -
June 23rd, 2010
High spirits
Victories for England and the USA in the world cup (and progression for both into the knock out stages) have meant 90% of the GRC attendees are either happy (American colleagues) or relieved (me)!
Meanwhile, the conference has continued just as it started, with superb talks and posters. This morning’s session focused on the biomedical applications of noble metal nanoparticles, chaired by Naomi Halas from Rice. Talks from Rebekah Drezek, Jin Zhang and Kimberley Hamad-Schiffer were excellent, each stimulating considerable discussion. Last night saw the second poster session, with nice contributions from Laura Fabris, Katherine Koen and prize winner Kimberley Hamad-Schiffer.
-
June 22nd, 2010
Evening session and posters (1)
After a free afternoon, Monday’s poster session got underway. The work was of an incredibly high standard, and most of the presenters spent practically the entire 2 hours talking to interested attendees. A number of the posters stood out for me, including offerings from Jon Edgar at University of Technology, Sydney, Emily Day from Rice, Duncan Dam of Northwestern and finally the day’s prize winner ($500!) Ali Coskun of Northwestern. Congratulations to him.
After a good meal we heading back to the lecture theatre for the evening session. Here Bartosz Grybowski of Northwestern gave a fascinating overview of his team’s work in designing nanoparticle assemblies which can be used as chemical amplifiers and advanced drug delivery systems. After this we returned for a final hour of poster discussions over a couple of well earned Sam Adams. A great day!
-
June 18th, 2010
Gordon Research Conference
Next week sees the inaugural Gordon Research Conference on Nobel Metal Nanoparticles take place near Boston. The GRCs are world-renowned for attracting the very best speakers, and this is certainly true of next week’s meeting with keynotes from the likes of Mostafa El-Sayed (Georgia Tech) and Chad Mirkin (Northwestern). Chaired by Terri Odom (Northwestern) and Michael Natan (Oxonica), the event promises to be a key meeting in the field.
The World Gold Council were delighted to be given the opportunity to part-sponsor the event. I will blog every day next week with updates from the meeting
-
June 16th, 2010
Solid gold… Or maybe not
As world cup fever starts to build through the early stages of the tournament, many of the team captains will be starting to dream of lofting that famous trophy over their head on final day. FIFA has always said the trophy itself is “solid gold”, but this claim has been questioned by a chemistry professor at the University of Nottingham as reported here. Gold is extremely dense, and thus extremely heavy meaning a trophy of this size would weigh far too much for the tradional hoisting after the final it is was indeed solid gold.If you are interested, and would like to hear a bit more from Professor Poliakoff on the chemistry behind the world cup trophy take a look at this short video on youtube.
-
May 24th, 2010
Chemistry & Industry article
Recently we were asked to contribute a brief feature article to Chemistry & Industry, the publication of The Society of Chemical Industry (SCI). The article, focusing on gold catalysis, has just been published and is available to read here. -
April 23rd, 2010
Gold is ‘supercool’
A great illustration of how important gold is to cutting edge research is the observation that most issues of the leading journal Nature appear to include new research on the metal; be it catalysis, nanotechnology, chemistry or materials science. The most recent issue is no exception, with a new paper – ‘Substrate -enhanced supercooling in AuSi eutectic droplets’ by researchers from the CNRS facility in Grenoble, France.
Trevor Keel
Richard Holliday
Recent comments: