News 2007
December 2007
Thursday 13th December saw the Group Christmas Party (held jointly with the Morrison and Lightfoot groups) at the Russell hotel. A great time was had by all. Click here to see photos of the event.
Sharon, Karen and Diego travelled to London 10-12 th December for two meetings (the British Radiofrequency Spectroscopy Group (BRSG) Meeting at the Institute of Physics and the NMR Discussion Group meeting (NMRDG) organized by the RSC). Both meetings were very good, and featured talks from collaborators in Glasgow and Warwick.
November 2007
Sharon and Diego spent the last week of November at Bruker in Karlsruhe with Dr Stefan Steuernagel carrying out 1H and 13C NMR experiments on a project in collaboration with Professor Douglas Philp. While they were there they took a sneak preview at the new 400 MHz machine which is due to be installed in St Andrews next year. Click here too see the photos.
Sharon, along with a consortium of investigators (including Dr Melinda Duer, Cambridge, Dr Jeremy Titman, Nottingham, Professor Steve Wimperis, Glasgow, Professor Robin Harris, Durham and Professor Mark Smith and Professor Ray Dupree, Warwick) led by Dr Steven Brown, Warwick, have been awarded £3.8M by EPSRC and BBSRC to set up a National 850 MHz solid-state NMR facility, to be based at the University of Warwick.
Click here to see the press release.
October 2007
Three project students have joined the group: Simon Reader, Caroline Pringle and Iain Kendrick (joint student with Paul Wright). Check their personal pages for more information.
Sharon’s paper “17O and 29Si NMR Parameters of MgSiO3 Phases from High-Resolution Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy and First-Principles Calculations” with Andrew Berry, Alan Gregorovic, Chris Pickard, Jenny Readman and Steve Wimperis has now been published (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 129, 13213-13224 (2007)).
September 2007
The group have just returned from the 5th Alpine Conference on Solid-State NMR in 
Chamonix, where Sharon gave a talk entitled “Exploiting First-Principles Calculations and High-Resolution NMR for Structural Studies of High-Pressure Silicates”. Diego and Karen both presented posters on their work (High-Resolution NMR Studies of Boroxophenanthrene (Diego) and An Investigation of Scandium Coordination using 45Sc NMR (Karen)). Also at the conference were collaborators from the Wimperis Group (Glasgow) and the Pickard Group (St Andrews).
Click here to see pictures of the group at the conference and enjoying the surrounding area in their free time.
August 2007
Sharon’s paper “17O and 29Si NMR Parameters of MgSiO3 Phases from High-Resolution Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy and First-Principles Calculations” with Andrew Berry, Alan Gregorovic, Chris Pickard, Jenny Readman and Steve Wimperis has been accepted for publication in J. Am. Chem. Soc.
July 2007
A few recently published papers have been added to the Publications page.
June 2007
From June 25-29, Sharon attended the Frontiers in Mineral Sciences conference (a joint meeting of MinSoc, MSA, MAC and SFMC) in Cambridge. She gave a talk entitled “Exploiting First-Principles Calculations for the Study of Mantle Silicates” in the Simulations of Earth and Planetary Materials session.
Congratulations to Malcolm Roxburgh who recently graduated with a 2:1 honours degree in Chemistry and Maths! Malcolm spent a year in the group working on first-principles calculations for the study of high-pressure minerals.
Sharon and Karen visited the Wimperis Group in Glasgow for three days of 45Sc NMR experiments on perovskite materials. The results from this work will hopefully be shown at the Alpine Conference in Chamonix in September.
May 2007
Diego spent three days in the group of Dr Steven Brown at the University of Warwick performing 13C and 1H NMR experiments for work in collaboration with Professor Douglas Philp.
March 2007
Sharon and Steve Wimperis visited Dr Stefan Steuernagel at Bruker, Karlsruhe for three days to undertake some high-field 17O NMR experiments on high-pressure minerals.
Professor Clare Grey (Stony Brook, New York) visited the School of Chemistry for three days in March and gave a talk about some of her recent work on energy materials. Also in March, collaborators Dr Steven Brown and PhD student Nathan Barrow visited the group.
February 2007
Congratulations to collaborator Steve Wimperis on his recent promotion to Professor of Magnetic Resonance!
January 2007
Our latest paper, “First-Principles Calculations of Solid-State 17O and 29Si NMR Spectra of Mg2SiO4 Polymorphs” has been accepted for publication in Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. See the Publications page for all the latest group publications.
Sharon, along with co-investigators Professor Russell Morris, Dr Paul Wright and Dr Phillip Wormald, has been awarded a £1.2 million grant from EPSRC for a wide-bore triple-channel 600 MHz NMR spectrometer! This will complement a new triple-channel 400 MHz school instrument to arrive in the next few months in the new solid-state NMR facility.
