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Research

Showcasing Digital Frontiers

Academics presented their ground-breaking research on quantum technology, natural language processing and bioinspired robotics, for example, and discussed how it is being applied, through partnerships with private and public sectors, to address challenges in healthcare, ethics and sustainability.

Fraser and Norma Stoddart PhD Prize 2023

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.

Dementia Study Shows How Toxic Proteins Spread

Researchers have discovered that synapses, which send essential signals through the brain, are also transporting toxic proteins known as tau around the brain.

Large clumps of the protein tau – called tangles – form in brain cells and are one of the defining features of Alzheimer’s disease. As these tangles spread through the brain during the disease there is a decline in brain function.

Daphne Jackson Fellowships

Life is unpredictable, and across the board it is commonplace to find yourself changing your career direction and needing to take a career break. This may be for a host of reasons from having a family, caring responsibilities, or health problems. Returning to your career can be challenging, and the issue for researchers, is it can be extremely difficult to pick off where you left off due to the fast-changing landscape of science and technology, and the resistance for truly flexible roles that promote a healthier work/life balance.

OpenBioSim: New Spinout Company Formed

A group of university research scientists has formed a company to adapt open-source academic chemical software for use in the pharmaceutical industry.

Spinout OpenBioSim, from the University of Edinburgh, is working with pharmaceutical companies to tailor its software, developed for research, for drug discovery.

Open-source software (OSS), where the source code is available for anyone to use, modify, and distribute, is becoming increasingly common in academia but, because it is difficult to commercialise, is less used in industry.

Professor Andrew Lawrence named Finalist in prestigious UK Blavatnik Awards

Professor Andrew Lawrence from the School of Chemistry has been announced as a finalist in the UK Blavatnik Awards 2023. This adds to his impressive accolades including being awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Grant in 2021, an EPSRC New Horizons Grant in 2020 and the BMOS-RSC Young Investigator Distinction Award in 2018. This is the second year in a row that a School of Chemistry researcher has been named a finalist, following Professor Stephen Thomas in 2022.