Professor Ivan Powis: A new technique ‘Mass Selected-Photoelectron Circular Dichroism’ (MS-PECD) was recently selected by an international panel as one of the top 5 ‘Innovations 2015’ by the magazine The Analytical Scientist (globally distributed to more than 70,000 professional readers).M.M. Rafiee Fanood, N.B. Ram, C.S. Lehmann, I. Powis, M.H.M. Janssen, “Enantiomer specific analysis of multi-component mixtures by correlated electron imaging–ion mass spectrometry” Nat. Commun., 6 (2015) 7511. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8511.
Professors Martyn Poliakoff and Mike George: A collaboration between green chemists and chemical engineers at the University of Nottingham and with the pharmaceutical company Sanofi to devise a sustainable and cheaper route to this important antimalarial drug. One important context is the goal of making this drug more affordable for African countries where Malaria is endemic. It has also attracted funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (grant no. 1070294) and EPSRC (EP/L021889/1). Applying Green Chemistry to the Photochemical Route to Artemisinin: Zacharias Amara, Jessica F. B. Bellamy, Raphael Horvath, Samuel J. Miller, Andrew Beeby, Andreas Burgard, Kai Rossen, Martyn Poliakoff and Michael W. George, NATURE CHEMISTRY, 7, JUNE 2015, 489-495. DOI: 10.1038/NCHEM.2261. YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfAJdnKqRCo
Professor Andrei Khlobystov – 2015 winner of the Royal Society of Chemistry Corday-Morgan Prize: Awarded for his pioneering work on carbon nano-containers and nano-reactors leading to new ways of directing molecular assembly and studying chemical reactions. His team discovered important mechanisms of interactions between carbon nanostructures and molecules or nanoparticles which enabled the design of nanoreactor systems with tuneable size and functionality. The nanoreactors have been applied for a range of reactions, including catalytic and electrochemical processes where molecular transformations are controlled at nanoscale e.g. Palladium nanoparticles in catalytic carbon nanoreactors: the effect of confinement on Suzuki-Miyaura reactions; Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2015, 3, 3918-3927
Professor Neil Champness with Professor Phillip Moriarty in Physics: Measuring the mechanical properties of molecular conformers. Jarvis, SP; Taylor, S; Baran, JD; Champness, NR; Larsson, JA; Moriarty, P. NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, 6, 8338 (2015) DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9338.
Professors Martyn Poliakoff and Mike George: Remote-controlled experiments with cloud chemistry. Skilton, RA; Bourne, RA; Amara, Z; Horvath, R; Jin, J; Scully, MJ; Streng, E; Tang, SLY; Summers, PA; Wang, JW; Perez, E; Asfaw, N; Aydos, GLP; Dupont, J; Comak, G; George, MW; Poliakoff, M. NATURE CHEMISTRY, 7, 1-5 (2015) DOI: 10.1038/nchem.2143.
GSK UG 4th Year Medicinal Chemistry drug discovery project: GSK’s 5 year sponsorship of the 4th year MSci drug discovery project on the identification of novel avb6 Integrin inhibitors directed towards a treatment for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis has now realised a second publication in Drug Discovery Today (impact factor of 7). 20 students have worked full time on the project over two cycles, with GSK providing strategic guidance and essential compound testing through Simon MacDonald, Director of Chemistry GSK Fibrosis DPU and visiting Professor in the School of Chemistry . (Tom McInally to provide reference shortly). S.J.F. Macdonald, M. J. Fray, T. McInally, Passing on the medicinal chemistry baton: training undergraduates to be industry-ready through research projects between the University of Nottingham and GlaxoSmithKline, Drug Discovery Today, 21, pp201-376, 2016, DOI:10.1016/j.drudis.2016.01.015.
Dr. Nick Besley: The recent Q-Chem paper by Besley was assigned as a "hot paper" with citations in September /October 2015 placing it in the top 0.1% of papers in the academic field of Physics. Advances in molecular quantum chemistry contained in the Q-Chem 4 program package. Shao et al. MOLECULAR PHYSICS (2015) 113 (2), 184-215.
Professor Jairton Dupont: Dupont’s paper on ionic liquids in catalysis was sufficiently highly cited to place it in the top 1% of the academic field of Chemistry based on the field and publication year. The Multiple Roles of Imidazolium Ionic Liquids in Transition-Metal Catalysis: The Palladium-Catalyzed Telomerization of 1,3-Butadiene with Acetic Acid (2015) Balbino, Joao M.; Peral, Daniel; Carles Bayon, J.; et al. CHEMCATCHEM 7 (6), 972-977.
Professor Chris Moody: Stereoselective synthesis of highly substituted tetrahydrofurans through diverted carbene O-H insertion reaction (2015) Angewandte Chemie International Edition 54, 8485-8489. Eli Lilly Open Innovation Drug Discovery programme has identified one compound that is showing activity against a target for diabetes - Eli Lilly are undertaking further biological screening.