Department of Chemistry

Teaching: Oxford Chemistry offers world-class teaching, consistently rated among the best in the UK. Students study a four-year course, a unique feature of which is spending their final year working full-time on a project with some of the leading researchers in the UK. The Oxford course has been judged as excellent by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). more...

Research: Oxford is one of the leading chemistry research departments in the world with around 80 academic staff carrying out international-level research, and an annual research income of around £15 million. The latest (2008) Research Assessment Exercise confirmed that Oxford Chemistry has the highest “power rating” (breadth and depth of science) in the UK. The Department is currently engaged in a number of innovative areas of work including chemistry for measurement, drug discovery, energy, catalysis, nanochemistry, synthesis, atmospheric chemistry, synthetic biology and femtochemistry. more...

Facilities: Oxford Chemistry occupies three major laboratory buildings in the University’s science area, including a modern RIBA award-winning £64m dedicated research facility opened in 2004.

Outreach: Engaging schools and the wider community in chemistry and science is an important activity for academic staff and students in the Department. Oxford Chemistry regularly hosts visits and events within the Department and takes part in local and national activities to demonstrate chemistry’s central role in everyday life. more...

Commercialisation: The Department has an unrivalled track record in protecting and commercialising the innovative work of research staff. Over £80 million in cash has been raised for the University as a result of spin out activities from research carried out by Oxford chemists.more...

Chemistry Departments

Her Majesty The Queen opened the new £60 million Chemistry Research Laboratory on the 20th February 2004. This state of the art facility has five floors covering ~17,000 sq.m of laboratory and office space. The £60 million has been raised with grants from the JIF, Wolfson Foundation, EP Abraham Trust, Thomas Swan, the family of Landon T Clay, the Salters Company and a £20 million partnership with IP Group.

Latest News from the Department of Chemistry

Oxford Organic Chemistry Poster Symposium 2009

The annual Oxford Organic Chemistry Poster Symposium, sponsored by Pfizer, was held on Thursday 15th October 2009, and all 2nd year organic and biological chemistry D.Phil.s students (i.e. 37 posters) were invited to participate. This year, Dr. John Moses (Nottingham) and Dr. Bruno Linclau (Southampton) were the external judges, in addition to Dr. Charlie Mowbray and Dr. Mark Bunnage, both representatives from Pfizer.
Congratulations to Cedric Callens who has been awarded the first prize with his poster entitled “Extending the scope of the tethered aminohydroxylation (TA)”, one of the key research areas in the Donohoe group more........

Beth Cummings wins poster prize

Beth Cummings, a graduate student from the PTCL, has won the prize for the best poster at the recent Cavity Enhanced Spectroscopy meeting in Leiden , 2-6 November 2009. The poster was entitled “Real-time simultaneous measurements of oxygen and carbon dioxide in breath”. more........

On the cover of Journal of Chemical Physics

Work by Alex Wilber in Dr Jonathan Doye's group has been featured on the cover of The Journal of Chemical Physics. The research uses computer simulations to explore how to design synthetic patchy particles to self assemble into symmetric shell-like structures similar to virus capsids more........

Research Highlighted in C&E News

A recent publication by Justin Chalker and Part II Charlotte Wood of the Ben Davis group was highlighted in Chemical & Engineering News. The research—recently reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society—features a novel water-soluble catalyst for Suzuki-Miyaura cross coupling. The catalyst enabled the first Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling on protein substrates and is also useful in small molecule synthesis. more........

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