Welcome
EaStCHEM, the joint Chemistry Research School of Edinburgh and
St. Andrews funded by the Scottish Funding Council for Further and
Higher Education, the Office of Science and Technology and the parent
Universities, is the premier Chemistry research school for Chemistry
in Scotland and one of the largest in the UK, with around 500 researchers.
EaStCHEM expands the proud Chemistry tradition of Edinburgh and
St Andrews.
EaStCHEM's key aim is excellence in both core and interdisciplinary
chemistry.
The vibrant research activity relies on world-class academic staff,
postgraduate research fellows, a large, well resourced graduate
school and high class research support facilities and infrastructure,
available both internally and externally. Our activities span fundamental
and applied chemical research, and we are major partners in collaboration
with other disciplines and with industrial partners.
EaStCHEM has four main research areas; The Chemistry/Biology Interface,
Experimental and Theoretical Chemical Physics, Synthesis and Materials Chemistry. These areas underpin major initiatives
in Chemistry for Health, In Silico Scotland, Innovative Synthesis
and New Materials.
Recent News
Hirst Academic Fellow
An EaStCHEM Advanced Academic Fellowship in Inorganic Chemistry to be held at the University of St Andrews is now available. See the job advert pdf for full details.
Poster Prizes
Out of more than 260 posters presented at the International Metal Organic Framework Conference, held recently in Marseille, two EaStCHEM PhD students were highlighted for their excellence.
Michael Wharmby's poster (Paul Wright group) covered the synthesis and structural characterisation of lanthanide and scandium frameworks. Phoebe Allan's poster (Russell Morris group) discussed how X-ray diffraction and pair distribution function analysis can be used to study changes in solids during dehydration and adsorption processes.
At the same meeting another EaStCHEM PhD student, Infas Mohideen, gave an excellent talk on his new material that can sort gases into different channels depending on their chemistry.
Hot ChemComm articles from the Cazin Group
Two of the Cazin group's recent papers have been described in the ChemComm Blog and have also been selected as ChemComm Hot Articles. The first article reports the use of copper synthons as NHC transfer agents to generate catalytically
active gold and palladium complexes.
The second article reports how a ruthenium-based metathesis catalyst (RMC) fluctuates between trans- and cis-isomer upon heating. It is the first example of an indenylidene complex bearing monodentate ligands that exhibit cis-configuration. The catalytic studies showed the system to be latent and outstandingly active in
RMC reactions. This performance led to rapid commercialisation of the catalyst.
As C&E News reports (Sept 27th), it has taken less than six months from
discovery to market. Both these papers are free to access until the 8th of October
Curly Arrow and St Andrews Chemistry
It is a well kept secret that the first every 'curly arrow' was published in the organic chemistry literature in 1922 from a St Andrews paper. The curly arrow now has iconic status as a symbol for the movement of electrons when drawing mechanisms, particularly in organic
chemistry.
The first curly arrow was pushed by Professor Robert Robinson when he was at St Andrews (1921-1923). He was a pioneer in the development of 'electronic theory'. Read all about the history of the curly arrow in a recent article in Chemistry World by Professors Douglas Lloyd and David O'Hagan
Robotic Diffractometer comes of age
A recent paper has detailed the development of a fully automated robotic diffractometer which will collect data, solve structures and email the answers. The paper has now been highlighted in the German Chemical
Society magazine(the RSC News equivalent). Only a dozen or so papers from all
over chemistry are honored that way each month.
Apart from using the new instrument, which is the first of its type in the world, for conventional crystallography Slawin and Woollins' group also studied the reliability of results from absolute chirality investigations. Looking at PhEEPh (E = S, Se, Te) they showed that samples of these materials can form bulk crystals with a handedness, even to the extent of a single enantiomer in some cases.
The new system is a joint venture with Rigaku, who have a video of the diffractometer system in operation on their website.
One of Prof Steve Nolan's research papers has entered the list of most cited papers in chemistry. Entitled "Determination of N-Heterocyclic Carbene (NHC) Steric and Electronic Parameters Using the [(NHC)Ir(CO)2Cl] System" and published in Organometallics, 2008, vol. 27, p.202. It has come in at position #14 in the 2009 Hot Chemistry list.
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) belong to the list of persistent organic
pollutants (POPs) included in the Stockholm Convention. The destruction of PCBs
is often performed by incineration, which raises environmental concerns.
A catalytic system capable of efficiently promoting the hydrodehalogenation of
PCBs using isopropanol as the hydrogen source and NaOH as the base was
developed by the Cazin group, as described in this Chemical Communication article, which has been awarded "hot article" status.
Dr P.Wormald and Dr W. Nazaroz have been awarded an initial £300,000 funding for studentships. We have diverse NMR instrumentation to be installed shortly and traditional instrumentation for the analysis of polymers synthesised in our laboratory using Living Free-Radical Polymerization by Reversible Addition-Fragmentation Chain Transfer (RAFT) techniques. The laboratory is aimed at creating new materials for high energy laser matter interactions, aiding fusion energy research and low carbon emission technologies with UK and international partners and developing novel NMR techniques for polymer systems. Further areas of interest are phosphorus and fluorine containing polymer membranes. Research capabilities to be added later to complement our solid state NMR include a 20 MHz TD NMR for monitoring polymerisation reactions and diffusion mechanisms and a 43 MHz Fast Field cycling NMR.
Chemistry in the East of Scotland has shot to the top of the latest
UK league table, in the most important analysis of research outputs
for seven years.
EastChem the SFC research pooling partnership in Chemistry between
St Andrews and Edinburgh Universities has scored highest in Scotland
in the latest RAE announced on 18th December 2009. The EastChem partners
submitted 75% of all world leading outputs (4*) in Scotland and 12%
of world leading outputs in all of the UK. From 32 submissions EastChem
was the largest in UK Chemistry. The research School comes 4th in the
GPA metric and first when staff volume is factored in (the power ranking),
sitting above Oxford and Cambridge.
Quality GPA x staff numbers ranking
- EastChem
- University of Oxford
- University of Cambridge
- University of Bristol
(Out of 32)
Quality GPA
- University of Cambridge
- University of Nottingham
- University of Oxford
- EastChem
(Out of 32)
This is an outstanding performance and demonstrates world class breadth and depth in the chemical sciences in the East of Scotland. The spectacular rise in research quality as judged by peer review, is a result of a sustained commitment by the respective Universities and the Scottish Funding Council in supporting excellence in chemistry over the last five years. It also reflects the dedication and commitment of many academics, support staff and their students in suceeding in ground breaking research over a wide range of challenging programmes.
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