The non-invasive technique could provide medical staff with instant data on the health of donor livers and help them to identify which organs are suitable for transplant.

If widely adopted, the light-based tool could allow more livers to be transplanted safely and effectively experts say.

In the UK, liver disease is the third biggest cause of premature deaths. With demand for transplants growing and no matching increase in the donor pool, surgical teams must find efficient techniques to detect if organs are safe for transplant or not.

Dr Adam Kirrander has been awarded funding to search for a new effect in ultrafast x-ray scattering which would make it possible to track electrons using x-rays.

The EPSRC project aims to make fundamental theoretical advances in the group in Edinburgh and use these to drive the development of new experiments at x-ray free-electron lasers such as the LCLS-II and the Eu-XFEL.

Their research paper ‘Ultrafast X-ray scattering offers a structural view of excited-state charge transfer’ was recently published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Their study is the first to directly observe how a molecule’s structure changes as charge is redistributed, with some chemical bonds getting longer and some shorter, before finally relaxing back into its original state.

The Dr Brian R. Phillips PhD Scholarships for Chemistry Research will fund UK students with the greatest academic potential. The programme commences in the 2021/22 academic year and will benefit a new student each year.

The first Dr Brian R. Phillips Scholarship recipient, Andrew Clark, a current final year undergraduate at Edinburgh, has been selected by the School of Chemistry Postgraduate Committee. He will join the Lusby group to research the development of novel radio-pharmaceuticals.

The School of Chemistry is pleased to invite applications for the 2021 Christina Miller Research Fellowship.

Congratulations to Professor Alison Hulme on being elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Alison joins leading thinkers and practitioners from Scotland and beyond who are recognised for the contribution they and their work make to wider society. 

More Information

• The RSE announces 2021 Fellows

BioCaptiva has been launched with more than £1 million in seed investment from Edinburgh-based angel investment syndicate Archangels and Scottish Enterprise.

It has developed a next-generation “liquid biopsy” technology that captures circulating free DNA (cfDNA) from patients’ blood in much greater quantities than the current standard of a single blood draw can, overcoming a significant current limitation of cancer liquid biopsy testing.

Named BioCollector, the device works alongside a standard apheresis machine, filtering cfDNA from the patient’s blood system.

Nikola Zotev is the winner of this year's Norma and Fraser Stoddart Prize. Nikola studied for his PhD in the research group of Dr Adam Kirrander.

Stoddart Prize winners are expected not only to have demonstrated superior research accomplishments throughout their time at Edinburgh but they should also have contributed to the life of students within the School of Chemistry and beyond.

A paper by Dr Adam Kirrander titled "Observation of the molecular response to light upon photoexcitation" has been selected by Nature Communications as one of the top 50 articles in physics in 2020.

The paper was selected from over 6,400 that were published by the journal.

Shona Richardson, a postgraduate student from the Campopiano group, has had an article published in Chemistry, A European Journal.

The paper, titled "The Role of Early‐Career Chemists in European Policy‐Making", was written with help from the European Young Chemistry Network and the European Chemical Society. Their aim is to create a platform for early‐career chemists in policy advice.

Shona's research project is funded by the Derek Stewart Trust.