News
- March 2025: Funded by the Royal Society Yusuf Hamied Fellowship 2025, Elena gives institutional lectures at the IIT Delhi, BITS Pilani, and IIT Guwahati, India.
- February 2025: Funded by the Royal Society Yusuf Hamied Fellowship 2025, Elena visits the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi Abu Dhabi campus (UAE). Her visit was hosted by Prof. Mohammad Ali Haider, Vice Provost for Research and External Engagement IIT Delhi - Abu Dhabi and launched the International Symposium on Carbon Capture and Beyond (CCB), the global dialogue on decarbonisation and circular economy solutions.
- December 2024: Connor Williamson passed his PhD viva with green colours! Well done, Connor, and the very best of luck in your future career which will be a great success. We will miss you.
- November 2024: New PhD student, Mr. Rayen Ben Ismail, joins the group. Rayen will be working on computational and machine learning modelling of the growth and properties of 2D semiconductor materials. Welcome to the group, Rayen!
- October 2024: New PhD student, Mr. Cameron Reeve, joins the group. Cameron completed his MSci research project with us working on modelling the dynamics of like-charged dielectric particles in atmospheric conditions. During his PhD, Cameron will continue the development of electrostatic models and their applications.
- October 2024: Elena and Ilya attended the 11th Triennial Congress of the International Society for Theoretical Chemical Physics
which took place in Qingdao, China. Elena gave an invited lecture "Crystal embedded multi-reference study of strongly correlated materials", and Ilya presented a poster "Electronic structure of periodic systems containing strongly correlated transition metals".
- This summer our group hosted two excellent A-levels students from London and Somerset who are thinking of studying Chemistry and Mathematics in the future. The bright young ladies impressed us with their intelligence and tenacity, and we wish Tara and Phoenix the very best in their further education.
Summer of Awards
- Elena is presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Electrostatics Society of America. The Award reads "Presented to Elena Besley for her outstanding contributions to the field of Electrostatics, especially in development of theories in charged interactions, and their applications. The Friendly Society offers you this token of our admiration and gratitude. 12 June 2024"
- July 2024: Isabel Cooley comes back to the School to collect the much deserved Sir Fraser and Norma Stoddart Prize for Outstanding Citizenship and Academic Excellence in Postgraduate Research 2024. Izzy has delivered an excellent prize lecture to the School, which was very well received by the audience. We wish Izzy the very best in her future.
- July 2024: Cameron Reeve receives the Nick Besley Memorial Prize, which was set up in memory of Professor Nick Besley and is awared annually to a 4th year MSci student for the most outstanding final-year Computational Chemistry project. Cameron will start his PhD with us in September. An excellent addition to the group!
- June 2024: Ilya Popov is the winner of a 2023 Molecular Physics Early Career Researcher Prize. From a large number of nominations, the panel of Editors of Molecular Physics and Taylor & Francis Publisher judged Ilya's recent paper "Effective hamiltonian of crystal field method for periodic systems containing transition metals" Molecular Physics, 121, e2106905 (2023) as one of the best papers. Congratulations, Ilya!
Here is the complete list of the winners of Molecular Physics Early Career Researcher Prize.
- May 2024: Connor Williamson (shown on the right) is the winner of the Best Poster Prize at the 2024 Dan Eley Symposium, School of Chemistry, University of Nottingham.
The prize, presented by Adam Lee from Croda, acknowledges Connor's recent study of the Casimir forces in layered materials. Connor has also presented this research at the PGR symposium at the School of Chemistry in July and received the 2nd prize for Materials Chemistry talks. Well done, Connor!
- June 2024: Evan Shelton joins the group to undertake an undergraduate summer project "Modelling collision efficiency of charged particles in atmospheric conditions". Evan is the first recipient of the John Langton Research Bursary - an annual award of £2000 made to a home UK student in Chemistry at the University of Nottingham to support them over a summer research project in the School.
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- May 2024: Elena and Sadegh attended the workshop "Atomic structure of nanosystems from first-principles simulations and
microscopy experiments" (AS-SIMEX 2024) which took place on a cruise boat Helsinki - Stockholm - Helsinki. Elena gave an invited lecture "Understanding the dynamics of chemical bond dissociation under the electron beam: computational perspective". Sadegh presented a poster "Revealing the shape of corralled metal nanoparticles".
- April 2024: The group attended the two-day Computational Chemistry Retreat at Hartington Hall, the Peak District. Elena gave a talk "Molecular quantum rings" and Ilya gave a talk entitled "Transition metal dopants as spin cubits: understanding the multiplet electronic
structure using effective Hamiltonian of crystal field method".
- March 2024: Aleksandra leaves the group to take up a postdoctoral position at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
- January 2024: Research visit to the University of Glasgow hosted by Prof. David Moran (Advanced Semiconductors, School of Engineering) and Dr. Alexey Ganin (Materials Chemistry, School of Chemsitry). Elena gave a talk entitled "Modelling van der Waals heterostructures and their suitability for device applications".
