Double win for the Hobday Group at the British Crystallographic Spring Meeting! Congratulations to 2nd year PhD student Cecilia Hong and postdoctoral researcher Dr Shivani Grover from the Hobday group who won poster prizes for their simulation based work at this year’s British Crystallographic Spring Meeting held in Leeds. Cecilia won the Early Stage Crystallographer’s Prize from Rigaku for her work entitled “Insight into the correlated disorder of fumarate-based MIL-53(Ga) frameworks: A computational study on the mechanical responses”. Shivani won the International Union of Crystallographers Journals Poster Prize for the presentation of “Understanding the barocaloric effect in choline based plastic crystals from ab initio molecular dynamics”. Both Cecilia and Shivani’s research is focussed on using computational methods to study flexible crystals and understanding their phase behaviour when varying temperature or pressure. Their techniques provide an atomistic detail which cannot be achieved through experiments. This family of crystals are of particular interest as potential solid-state refrigerants which could replace current liquid refrigerants. A change in technology would be more environmentally friendly by reducing the concentration of volatile greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. This article was published on 2024-04-17
