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Today is a bittersweet day for the group, as our first-ever PhD student, Kate Tustain, marks her final day and last group meeting with us. We are so incredibly proud of Kate for all she has achieved over the past four years, and for the intelligence, commitment and kindness she has given to her workContinue reading “Kate Submits her Thesis!!!”

Today, Jen gave a talk at the Polarised Neutron for Condensed Matter Investigations conference held virtually by NIST. This conference aims to connect the worlds scientists whose principle technique involves polarised neutrons, and this conference includes updates on instrumentation and science highlights from across the world. This year has been a great conference, with manyContinue reading “Jen Presents at PNCMI 2021”

This has been a very exciting week for our group – Sam, Tristan and Aly took a trip to the I19 beamline at Diamond, along with Sarah (Champness group) to explore lots of the single crystals that Sam and Tristan have been synthesising over the past few months. This was great, as it was Tristan’sContinue reading “A week full of X-Rays!”

On Thursday, Jen took part in the ILL’s annual clip show – where each student has 4 minutes to present an overview of their thesis. This year there was a total of 50 presentations, taking a marathon zoom session of 4.5 hours to complete! The clips are then judged by the ILL’s directors and headContinue reading “Jen Wins the ILL PhD Clip Show!”

For the past month, Jen has been taking part in an outreach activity called I’m a Scientist! This project aims to connect school students with real life scientists across a variety of fields, so students can ask their important questions to the scientists and find out about careers, different areas of science or just whatContinue reading “Jen takes part in I’m a Scientist – Get me out of here!”

Within the Chemistry department at the University of Birmingham there is a new seminar series which has just started on the subject of Materials Chemistry. This is to link the wide variety of materials chemists across the department, so we can understand what work is happening in other groups, and maybe get advice or ideasContinue reading “Aly Presents at the Materials Chemistry Seminar”

Aly and Jen both presented at the NMSUM Student Day, which was held online this year. This is a student only event held just before the main conference, so students can present their work in a friendly environment. This year featured a number of talks from instrument scientists giving overviews of research topics and currentContinue reading “Aly and Jen Present at the 2021 NMSUM Student Day”

This has been a very exciting week for Aly as he moved down to Wantage to start work at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source! Aly will be joining his co-supervisor Goran Nilsen for the last year and a half of his PhD. Aly will be partly working at the deuteration facility.

Sam recently attended the 18th BCA/CCG Intensive Teaching School in X-Ray Structure Analysis. The school was run virtually for the first time, and although it was a shame not to meet everyone in person, the course was a great success. Sam in particular benefitted from discussions over modelling disorder and will look to apply whatContinue reading “Sam Attends the Durham Crystallography School”

Today we are pleased to welcome the newest additions to our group, MSci students Jacob and Ed. Jacob and Ed will be researching the structural and magnetic complexities of an intriguing spinel, ZnV2O4 alongside Jen. We wish them all the best in their masters projects, and hope they have a great final year, despite theContinue reading “Ed Sale and Jacob Williams Join the Group”