Department of Chemistry Overview and industry links 19th March 2018
REF 2014 Chemistry : 6= in UK Cambridge 62.7 FTE staff Liverpool 34 Oxford 83.9 Bristol 58.6 Durham 40.8 Imperial 54.9 UCL 62 Warwick 34.8 Cardiff 23 UEA 19.6 Medium size / high quality
Department profile Ca. 500 UG students Ca. 160 PhD Students Ca. 70 postdoctoral researchers /fellows 42 academic staff (8 teaching only) 36 support staff Ca. 40 PG taught students on range of MSc programmes
Research organised into four thematic clusters Chemical biology Natural product biosynthesis Industrial biotechnology Drug discovery Biocatalysis Polymers and materials Synthesis / applications of polymer and colloid materials Mechanisms of polymer formation Polymer therapeutics Solid state: photovoltaic and magnetic materials
Synthesis and catalysis Synthetic methodology Organometallic chemistry Supramolecular chemistry Medicinal chemistry Homogeneous / heterogeneous catalysis Measurement and modelling Molecular assembly at interfaces Electroanalytical chemistry Scanning probe microscopy NMR and mass spectrometry Computational modelling of materials
Wide range of interactions with industry High proportion of our funding is from industry leading amongst peer group (ca. 1M p.a.) HESA data for % market share of industry funding (11/12 15/16)
Examples of types of interaction CDTs (Analytical sciences; Polymers; Diamond science and technology) require 50% industrial funding of PhD projects Polymer club: consortium which links Warwick Polymer Chemistry to global industries with an interest in polymer science Wide range of individual partnerships (see later) Facilities access: 800K of income from industry access to facilities such mid-2014
Spin-out companies Dave Haddleton: Medherant (medherant.co.uk) Transdermal drug delivery using adhesive polymer patches with constant rate of drug release
Peter Scott: Interface polymers (interfacepolymers.com) Polarfins are a new range of polymer additives that modify the properties of the world s most commonly used plastics polyethylene and polypropylene making them easier to mix, glue, paint and coat.
3 Royal Society Industry Fellows Julie Macpherson: diamondbased electrochemical sensors for applications in healthcare, analysis, environment and security (with ElementSix) Richard Walton: functional inorganic metal oxide materials for hetergeneous catalysis, and electronic properties (with JM) Peter Scott: Interface polymers spinout company
Current examples of industry co-sponsored CDT projects: Exploiting very-fast MAS NMR: Enabling New Applications to Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Life Sciences Applications of Electrochemistry in Pharmaceutical Research and Development Detailed structural analysis of agrichemicals using advanced mass spectrometry methods. Photons to heat; how chemical filters deal with UV radiation Analysis of Atomic Order and Disorder in Mixed-Metal Oxide Materials relevat to Heter0geneous Catalysis Petroleomics: Crude and Heavy Fuel Oil Fingerprinting and Asphaltenes Brown / Lewandowski Macpherson O Connor Stavros Walton Barrow Bruker Pfizer Syngenta Lubrizol JM Lubrizol
Example 1: Matt Gibson cryopreservation with GE Healthcare Use of low-cost synthetic polymers which prevent / control ice growth Allow cells and tissue samples to be frozen / stored at low temps with less damage
Example 2: Martin Wills enantioselective reduction catalyst Commercialised / sold by JM and used in patented work by others
Example 3: Giovanni Costantini corrosion inhibitors (with Lubrizol) What is the adsorption configuration of corrosion inhibitors on various metallic surfaces? And what is their chemical state? High-resolution STM and XPS studies on films of corrosion inhibitors
Simulation Outputs Example 4: Scott Haberson accelerating catalyst design using reaction-path data-mining (with JM) Modelling the large number of relevant chemical reactions in a catalytic system, provides new directions in nanoparticle catalyst design. Catalysis for exhaust gas processing Path-constrained molecular dynamics Quantum chemistry Kinetic modelling Common exhaust gases CO NOx Pt/Pd/Rh nanoparticles Reaction network + Mechanisms Thermodynamics + Rates (TST) Rate laws + Product selectivity N2 NH3 O2 ktst ΔG Reaction-path data-mining Reactivity/selectivity descriptors Feature extraction Cu-promoted zeolites Reaction-network visualisation
Example 5: Ann Dixon structural biology projects with Mologic Ltd. Structures and ligandbinding properties of proteins by NMR, CD, fluorescence, DLS Expertise in protein and ligand design; cloning; mutagenesis; bacterial expression / purification
Summary I could go on and on Take-home message: proven outstanding research quality leading amongst our peers in industry income proven success in translation / exploitation Industry-funded projects in all areas (computation, drug discovery, polymers, catalysis, electrochemistry ) Outstanding analytical facilities through out RTPs