PhD graduate Weronika Gruszka has been named the winner of the 2023 Fraser and Norma Stoddart PhD Prize. This prestigious prize is awarded annually to PhD graduate who has shown not only excellence in research, but has also contributed to the life of students within the School.

Weronika recently completed her PhD research within the Garden group. She will return to the School of Chemistry in July to receive her prize and share her research with students and staff.

In March, the School of Chemistry welcomed back alumnus Prince Chakanyuka for his talk: "Ah! – The Element of Surprise: What does it take to grow beyond your wildest dreams?"

At this event, Prince shared his incredible story with students, from his high school days in Zimbabwe, to Edinburgh to study Medicinal and Biological Chemistry as one of six pioneer Mastercard Foundation Scholars, to London and becoming an award-winning rising star in business within just a few years of graduating.

As part of British Science Week 2023, Chunchun Ye was one of three University of Edinburgh researchers named finalists in the STEM for Britain Awards:

The Rhodes Scholarship is highly competitive; Geofrey is one of only two Rhodes Scholars chosen out of hundreds of applicants from Zambia this year. He will join the University of Oxford in autumn 2023 to begin his PhD studies and further his interests at the interface of inorganic and materials chemistry.

Geofrey came to Edinburgh in 2018 as a Mastercard Foundation Scholar and graduated in 2022 from the BSc (Hons) Chemistry degree programme. Reflecting on his time at the University of Edinburgh, Geofrey said:

The aldol reaction is amongst the oldest and most established reactions in organic chemistry. However, despite being an intensive area of research, access to aldol products, β-hydroxy ketones, has been limited to the use of aldehydes and ketones. Using born catalysis the Thomas group have overcome this and allowed esters and lactones to be used to access aldol products.

Congratulations to Zoe Gidden, who has been awarded a Sir William Darling Memorial Prize of £1000. Zoe joined the Horrocks lab as a PhD student in the EASTBIO (East of Scotland BioScience) Doctoral Training Partnership and is co-supervised by Dr Mathew Horrocks and Prof. Lynne Regan at the School of Biologicial Sciences.

School of Chemistry PhD student Alexander Triccas has been named as one of the 9 finalists with 3 coming from the College of Science and Engineering (Freya Bull – School of Physics and Astronomy and Collette Larking from the School of Engineering).

It is a great honour and surprise for me to be selected for this year’s Fraser & Norma Stoddart Prize. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my supervisor Prof Neil Robertson, public engagement coordinator Dr Jenny Bos, Dr Anna-Maria Maciejuk, as well as my colleagues, collaborators, friends and family who have each played a considerable role in this achievement. I would also like to acknowledge JASSO, the School of Chemistry and other funding organisations for their financial support during my time in Edinburgh.

School of Chemistry PhD students Jenke Scheen from the Michel group, Yuan Gao from the Guy Lloyd-Jones group and Optima CDT 4^th year PhD student Daisy Dickinson have all been named as finalists in the prestigious STEM for Britain national awards.

Final year PhD student Kiani Jeacock recently travelled to Pacific Grove, California, USA to attend and present at the 36^th Asilomar Conference on Mass Spectrometry (ACMS).