 Feature article in Chemistry & Biology
Recent work from the Benesch Group and their collaborators in Massachusetts and Toronto has been highlighted in a feature in Chemistry & Biology. Through the development of a novel mass spectrometry data analysis approach the authors were able to disentangle the myriad complexes formed between molecular chaperone proteins and their targets. This heterogeneity provides a rationale for the ubiquitous protection provided by these proteins.
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 Inspiring Future Generations of Female Scientists
Kylie Vincent and Emily Flashman have featured in a supplement published by the Independent promoting women's careers in Science. Feature on role models for women in science includes Dr Emily Flashman of Oxford University's Department of Chemistry, who was one of the winners of L'Oreal-Unesco Fellowships For Women in Science in 2011. She explains why science was the correct choice for her and why she believes there should be more female role models who are scientists. Dr Kylie Vincent, a research chemist at Oxford University, discusses her research into bacterial use of hydrogen and discusses how to attract and retain female staff working in the biological sciences. Her department is working towards earning an Athena SWAN award, which is given to university departments operating good practice for women.
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 Spotlighted in JACS
A recent paper from the BGD group has been spotlighted in JACS. It describes a new biocatalytic method for attaching pure glycans to
intact antibodies. This is the such first method and it has the potential to
allow the development of finely-tuned mAb-based drugs.
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 RSC/Chem Comm Awards Symposium
The Department was delighted to host the recent Royal Society of Chemistry / Chem Comm Awards Symposium in Inorganic Chemistry, featuring a number of recent RSC prize winners from the UK and beyond. The one day meeting was a big success and highlighted the quality and breadth of research being carried out in the field.
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 Oxford Chemistry tops the Guardian's University guide 2013
The University of Oxford's Department of Chemistry tops the subject ranking for Chemistry in the Guardian's University Guide 2013. The Guide is based on the things students care most about when they are choosing a course. Students need to know how good the teaching is, not whether academics are publishing lots of research. Will they get regular feedback on their work? And what do other students think of the course?
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 Paul Kaufman wins 2012 Salters Graduate Prize
Paul Kaufman Part II student from Merton has been announced as one of the 2012 Salters Graduate Prize winners. The Salters Graduate Prize of £1000 is awarded to up to ten exceptional final-year undergraduates studying at UK universities, who are capable of occupying leading positions in the chemical and allied industries in the future. In the written application and at the interview stage, Paul had to discuss the state of the current UK chemical industry, the challenges facing the industry now and in the future, and present his ideas on how developments in chemical research could help the industry overcome these challenges.
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 On the cover of OBC
Research from Dr Michael Willis' research group has been featured on the cover of Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, Issue 20. The cover highlights the palladium-catalysed aminosulfonylation of aryl-, alkenyl- and heteroaryl
halides and the scope of the three-component synthesis of N-aminosulfonamides. The cover was designed by Karl Harrison.
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 Part II research on the cover of Cambridge BlueSci Magazine
This term's "BlueSci" Magazine - Cambridge's answer to Oxford's "Bang!" - features a cover highlight article on the Part II work of Joe Paddison from the Goodwin Group. Joe published the first results from his Part II in an article in Physical Review Letters earlier this year. It is that paper - concerning the structure determination of frustrated magnets - on which BlueSci's Lindsey Nield focusses in her piece "Deducing Diffractions".
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 Elected to APS
Professor Peter Edwards has been elected as an International Member to the American Philosophical Society (APS). The American Philosophical Society promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and community outreach. This country's first learned society, the APS has played an important role in American cultural and intellectual life for over 250 years.
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 European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry
Stuart Conway has been designated by an International Selection Committee as the winner of the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry Prize for a Young Medicinal Chemist in Academia. This prestigious prize has been established to acknowledge and recognise an outstanding young medicinal chemist (<35 years) working in academia in Europe. The prize will be awarded at the XXIInd International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry in Berlin.
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 Cover article for C&EN
Recent publications from Carol Robinson's group and Justin Benesch's group have been highlighted in a cover article for C&EN. The article discusses the advances and application of mass spectrometry as a tool for structural biology. Where mass spectrometry answers questions that other methods can’t. Carol Robinson's research was recently published in Science and Justin Benesch in Structure (the cover was designed by Karl Harrison).
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 CRL research highlighted in JACS spotlight and C&E News
Recent work by Andrey Protchenko in the Aldridge/Mountford groups together with collaborators from UCL and Monash University has been highlighted in a recent JACS spotlight and in Chemical and Engineering News. The work – which is the subject of a recent communication – describes the synthesis and structural characterization of the first example of a simple acyclic silylene, SiR2.
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 Poster Prize at 2012 Spring Meeting of the British Crystallographic Association
Joe Paddison (a first year DPhil in the Goodwin Group ) won the RSC Solid State Chemistry Group Prize for his poster 'Frustration in beta-MnCo and MnO'
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 Poster Prize at 2012 Spring Meeting of the British Crystallographic Association
Nick Funnell (a post-doc in the Goodwin Group) won the Rigaku Poster Prize for his poster 'How Molecules Prepare to Undergo a Transition: The Onset of Disorder in Solid Cyclohexane'.
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 Alice Bowen wins JEOL Prize
Alice Bowen, a final year DPhil student in the Timmel group, was awarded the 2012 JEOL Student Lecture Prize at the recent RSC ESR spectroscopy meeting.
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 ChemComm interviews Paul Beer
The RSC Journal ChemComm in its series of research profiles has interviewed Professor Paul Beer. He talks about his research and having published over sixty Chem Comms.
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 Highlighted in PNAS
An article describing the work of two postdocs in the Chemistry Department has been highlighted in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. Kiminori Maeda and Kevin Henbest have shown that flavin-tryptophan radical pairs formed photochemically in the blue-light receptor protein cryptochrome have the properties needed to act as the primary sensor in the magnetic compass of migratory birds.
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 Video of the 2012 Bakerian Lecture
See the video of Bakerian Lecture given by Professor Peter Edwards FRS at the Royal Society. Professor Peter Edwards FRS was awarded the Bakerian Prize for his decisive contributions to the physics, chemistry and materials science of condensed matter including his work on the metal-to-insulator transition. The Bakerian Lecture prize lecture is the premier lecture in the physical sciences. The Bakerian Lecture is delivered annually at the Royal Society in London and is accompanied by a medal and a gift of £1,000. The lectureship was established through a bequest by Henry Baker FRS of £100 for an oration or discourse which was to be spoken or read yearly by one of the Fellows of the Society on such part of natural history or experimental philosophy, at such time and in such manner as the President and Council of the Society for the time being shall please to order and appoint. The lecture series began in 1775.
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 SCI's 1st National Retrosynthesis Competition Winners
Congratulations to David Daniels (Ed Anderson group), Robert Pullin and Christian Winter (both Tim Donohoe group) who were winners of the SCI's 1st National Retrosynthesis Competition. 10 teams, from both academia and industry (from 160 entries), were selected for the final based on an initial retrosynthesis target, which was held on 29th February at the SCI, London. Their presentation of the retro- and forward synthesis of Alsmaphorazine E, a second target molecule, was judged overall winner of the competition.
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 On the cover of JACS
The results of a collaboration between the Goodwin Group, Chemical Crystallography and the ISIS facility have been highlighted on the latest cover of JACS (14th March 2012). The paper reports the discovery by Andrew Cairns in his part II last year of 'record breaking' negative linear compressibility (NLC) in KMn[Ag(CN)2]3. This counterintuitive property, where a material reduces its volume under hydrostatic pressure by expanding in one direction, is very rare but potentially industrially useful. Image thanks to Anthony Phillips (QMUL).
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 Dr Alison Parkin - 2013 Biochemical Society Award
Dr Alison Parkin, Junior Research Fellow at Merton College and a member of Professor Armstrong group, has been awarded the 2013 Early Career Award by the Biochemical Society, for Bioenergetics and Metabolism.
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 BBSRC highlights Professor Ben Davis recent research
BBSRC-funded researchers at the Universities of Oxford and York have found compelling evidence that almost half of the enzymes that attach sugar molecules to proteins might do so using a very rare type of chemical reaction. The finding could provide a route to designing new protein- and inhibitor-based molecules with a wide variety of clinical uses. This recent breakthrough in sugar chemistry could open the door to a new generation of synthetic medicines and diagnostic tools.
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 Rob Paton Nature paper: Unravelling the biosynthesis of polyether natural products
Crystallographic and computational research, performed by workers in Singapore, Japan, the USA and the Paton group at Oxford has revealed the structure and function of an enzyme responsible for antibiotic synthesis.
The work, published this week in Nature, and highlighted in C & EN news, shows how Lsd19 catalyzes the formation of six-membered rings that deviate from the famous rules for ring-closure formulated by Sir Jack Baldwin at Oxford.
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 Powering up fuel cells
A Edge Article published in Chemical Science by Sadagopan Krishnan and Fraser A. Armstrong has been highlighted in the RSC Journal Chemistry World. The article details a hydrogen fuel cell that uses carbon nanotubes to increase the amount of electrocatalyst attached to electrodes has been designed by UK scientists. This arrangement offers an order of magnitude improvement in power density over existing designs.
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 2011 Highlight article in Journal of Physics B
A research paper by the Professor Softley group published in Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics last year has been selected by the journal's Editorial Board as a Highlight of 2011. Highlights are selected based on outstanding research and impact on the atomic, molecular and optical community, for which your article is highly-regarded.
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