Celebrating Discovery: Highlights from the 2025 Chemistry Postgraduate Symposium

Chemistry's annual PG Symposium brought together an impressive showcase of research talent, as PhD students took to the stage for a day of talks.

With 62 presentations spanning diverse themes, from catalysis to cancer detection, the event highlighted our postgraduate community's creativity and ambition.

A particular highlight was the presentation of the Greg Baker Award for Best Overall Talk, awarded to Georgina Rai for her outstanding work titled ‘A combined kinetic and computational analysis of the palladium-catalysed formylation of aryl bromides’. This prize includes a £200 prize and a formal mention on the winner’s academic transcript. 

Congratulations to all speakers and prize winners. Your work continues to inspire and push the boundaries of what is possible in chemical science. 

Prize Winners by Session 

Chemical Biology and Healthcare – Session 1  

1st Prize (Joint):  

• Siân Allerton — Molecular rotors detect the formation and conversion of WT α-synuclein oligomers and its pathological mutant variants  
• Eleanor Clifford — Characterisation of a semiquinone radical bound in the active site of respiratory complex I by hyperfine EPR spectroscopy 

2nd Prize:  

• Niall McIntyre — Development of a high-throughput, label-free platform for rapid screening of drug permeation across in vitro plasma membrane models 

Chemical Biology and Healthcare – Session 2  

1st Prize:  

• Gem Flint — G-Quadruplexes mediate long-range transcriptional reprogramming in drug-resistant ovarian cancer 

2nd Prize:  

• Charlie Brown — The Development of Isocitrate Dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1) Inhibitors Using a Covalent Fragment 

Synthesis and Catalysis  

1st Prize (Joint): 

• Sara Belazregue — PCP Supported Titanium Dinitrogen Complexes for Nitrogen Silylation and Small Molecule Activation  

• Hikaru Ishikura — Synthesis of gem-difluorocyclobutanes: Organolanthanum enabled synthesis and divergent catalytic functionalisation of gem-difluorocyclobutanols 

Imaging, Sensing and Analytical Chemistry  

1st Prize:  

• Xixian Yi — Ultra-sensitive Detection of HPV-induced Cancer Related Biomarkers from Liquid Biopsies 

Materials and Molecular Design  

1st Prize:  

• Matteo Albino — Water–Soluble Oligoyne based Raman-Tags for Raman Sensing 

Green Chemistry  

1st Prize (Joint):  

• Jhonn Cañón Gómez — Sustainable palladium catalysts for hydrogenation  

• Sarah Chapman — Electrons, leaves and light: investigating the photodegradation of agrochemicals 

2nd Prize:  

• Paransa Alimard — Plasmonic Bi-Decorated BiOBr/TiO₂ nanocomposites for NOx Pollution Remediation 

Theoretical, Computational and Data-driven Chemistry  

1st Prize (Joint):

• Wilson Wu — A combined experimental and machine learning approach for the discovery of new chemical receptors  

• Kipras Tallat Kelpsa — DFT study of HCP metals with Pourbaix diagrams 

Energy  

1st Prize (Joint):

• Davide Nodari — The Role of Interfacial Energy Band Offset in Controlling the Dark Current of Broadband Perovskite-Organic Heterojunction Photodetectors  
• Hannah Lynn — Unravelling The Degradation Mechanism in Fluorinated Disordered Rock-Salt Cathodes for Lithium-Ion Batteries 

This event spotlights the next generation of researchers and their innovation, drive to tackle real-world challenges and passion to shape the future of science.