The 68th Irish Universities Chemistry Research Colloquium took place at Cork University on the 23-24th of June. As always the colloquium highlighted the outstanding research being conducted by the best and brightest of Ireland’s young chemists at third level institutions across Ireland. All students from the group who attended said it was a brilliant few days with lots of interesting research presented. Well done to Jinju James for her poster presentation.

Congratulations to Chris Nottingham who received the BOC gas award for his outstanding PhD research project. Chris delivered an excellent presentation entitled ‘Ferrocene based ligands & catalysts for asymmetric synthesis’.

Well done to the third year PhD students Cian Kingston, Andrea Zanetti, Kevin Gahan and Brian Fitzpatrick who all presented their research at the Dublin Chemistry Third Year Talks Day on the 31st of May hosted by Trinity College Dublin.

Well done to Dr. Christopher Nottingham on passing his PhD viva today!

Chris has made some terrific advances in his research and submitted his thesis entitled “A novel family of ferrocene-containing ligands for asymmetric catalysis and the rational design of a “privileged scaffold” mimic”.

Congratulations to Dr. Kieran Connole on passing his Viva!

Kieran worked on developing new axially chiral ligands and has submitted his thesis entitled “Synthesis, Resolution & Application of Electronically Varied Chiral P,N Ligands in Asymmetric Catalysis”.

Congratulations to Dr. Mark Jackson who has just passed his Viva!

Mark worked on Palladium catalysis for his PhD project and has submitted his thesis entitled “Development of Pd-Catalysis for the Asymmetric Synthesis of Tertiary & Quaternary alpha-Aryl Containing Oxindoles”.

Denise Moran and Catherine Tighe attended the French Medicinal Chemistry Society’s Young Research Fellows Meeting which took place in the School of Pharmacy in Lille. This three day conference featured talks from young researchers as well as plenary lectures from academic and industrial researchers with a focus on drug discovery and optimisation. Congratulations to Catherine Tighe who was awarded the SCT-ACS J. Med. Chem. Joint Award which will send her to the upcoming 252nd ACS National Meeting in Philadelphia.

The CSCB Symposium- ‘Recent Advances in Synthesis and Chemical Biology XIV’ took place on Friday 11th of December in RSCI. Brilliant talks were delivered by Professor Norio Shibata (Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan), Professor Nils Metzler-Nolte (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany), Professor Jane Clarke (University of Cambridge, UK), Professor Stephen Clarke (University of Glasgow, UK) and Professor Miquel Pericas (ICIQ, Tarragona, Spain) . Well done to all the group members who presented posters, particularly to Catherine Tighe who was awarded a prize for her poster. Thanks to all involved in the organisation of the day.

Congratulations to Dr. Robert Doran who was awarded the prestigious Royal Irish Academy Young Chemist’s Prize. This prize is given for the most outstanding Irish PhD thesis of 2014 in the general area of the chemical sciences.

The 19th European Symposium of Organic Chemistry took place from the 12th to the 16th of July at the Universidade de Lisboa and was attended by Chris Nottingham, Catherine Tighe, Mark Jackson, Dr. Ramu Akula and Prof. Pat Guiry. There was a great line up of talks across the five days and a very enjoyable conference dinner. As the incoming President of ESOC, Pat announced that the next symposium will take place in Cologne (2017). Big congratulations to Chris Nottingham who was awarded the ESOC poster prize!