News 2008
December 2008
An enjoyable group Christmas dinner (joint with the Lightfoot group) took place on the 15th December at the Russell Hotel in St Andrews. Many thanks to Karen for her organisational skills!
Sharon recently returned from a trip to London where she attended the Christmas meetings of the BRSG at the IOP and the RSC NMRDG, on the 10th and 11th December.
Thursday 11th December saw the opening of the St Andrews Centre of Magnetic Resonance (CMR) which joins research groups in Physics, Chemistry and Biology in St Andrews and research groups in Dundee, w
orking in a range of areas including solution-state NMR, solid-state NMR, DNP, EPR, μSR and computation. (See here for the webpage for the centre). The CMR was opened by Professor Christian Griesinger (Gottingen, Germany), who gave the opening lecture sponsored by Bruker. Professor Griesinger also was given a tour of the new solid-state NMR facility by John.
December began with the visit of Dr Steven Brown and Nathan Barrow (University of Warwick) for experimental work on a collaborative project focussed on borates. We would also like to thank Nathan for his photography expertise and his help on new pictures for the website. Click here for new Group Members page.
November 2008
The last week of November saw the visit of Professor Stephen Wimperis and Teresa Kurkiewicz (University of Glasgow) to St Andrews for some collaborative work on experiments and calculations.
Sharon attended the Bruker solid-state user group meeting in Coventry this month and combined the trip with a seminar at the University of Nottingham, entitled “Solid-state NMR and first-principles calculations: structure, order and dynamics”
John’s paper “Solid-State 17O NMR Spectroscopy of Hydrous Magnesium Silicates: Evidence for Proton Dynamics” has been accepted for publication in J. Phys. Chem. This work is in collaboration with Dr Andrew Berry, Dr Chris Pickard and Professor Stephen Wimperis. See the Publications page for details.
Nathan Barrow (University of Warwick) visited the group for 5 days to perform some 11B experiments. Nathan is supervised by collaborator Dr Steven Brown.
October 2008
Welcome to new group members Valerie Seymour and Martin Mitchell who are new PhD students. In addition, two new project students Andrew Miller and Lucy Clark have also joined the group for a year to complete their fourth year projects.
September 2008
Sharon, John, Diego and Karen have just returned from the “Frontiers of Magnetic Resonance Meeting” of the BRSG in Warwick, UK. Sharon gave a talk (“Investigating Disorder in MAS NMR using First-Principles Calculations”), while posters were presented by John, Diego and Karen. Click here for pictures of the conference.
John and Karen have recently returned from a trip to Lyon, France where they used the 900 MHz facility.
August 2008
Collaborator Andrew Berry (Imperial College, London) spent four days in St Andrews, enjoying the Scottish summer weather. Andrew is currently working with postdoc John Griffin studying high-pressure silicate minerals from the inner Earth.
Our triple-channel 600 MHz NMR spectrometer (funded by a £1.2 million award from EPSRC) was installed Summer 2008.
Click here for pictures of the installation.
July 2008
Sharon has just returned from the Rocky Mountain Conference in Breckenridge, Colorado, USA (Click here for the link to the conference site). At the conference Sharon gave a talk entitled “Investigating Disorder and Dynamics in MAS NMR using First-Principles Calculations”. Take a look at the Photos page for more images of the trip.
June 2008
Congratulations to Caroline, Iain and Simon, who all graduated this month! Caroline and Iain completed their four year BSc courses, whilst Simon graduated with a first class five year MChem. Congratulations also to Simon on winning the Physical Chemistry Project Prize for his work in the Ashbrook group.
Sharon’s paper “Structure and NMR Assignment in Calcined and As-Synthesized Forms of AlPO-14: A Combined Study by First-Principles Calculations and High-Resolution 27Al-31P MAS NMR Correlation” with collaborators Marica Cutajar, Chris Pickard, Richard Walton and Steve Wimperis, has been accepted for publication in Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys.
May 2008
Caroline, Simon and Iain have all finished their project reports and successfully completed their vivas. Their projects were entitled
“Structurally-Bound Water in High-Pressure Magnesium Silicates” (Caroline)
“Structure and Properties of Scandium-Based Framework Solids” (Iain)
“Encapsulation of Nuclear Waste: Can We Interpret Solid-State NMR Spectra using DFT Calculations?” (Simon).
All three are now busy revising for their exams - Good luck!
April 2008
Sharon has recently returned from the British Crystallographic Association (BCA) Meeting in York, where she gave an invited talk entitled “Investigating Local Structure and Disorder by MAS NMR”.
Sharon, John, Karen and Simon attended the ScotCHEM computational chemistry conference in Glasgow on April 2nd. All four presented posters and John was awarded the poster prize for his poster “An Investigation of Structurally-Bound Water Dynamics in High-Pressure Magnesium Silicates combining First-Principles DFT Calculations and 17O Solid-State NMR” by John Griffin, Caroline E. Pringle, Andrew J. Berry, Stephen Wimperis, Chris J. Pickard and Sharon E. Ashbrook. Congratulations!
February 2008
Sharon has recently returned from a trip to 
South Africa with Dr Jeremy Titman (University of Nottingham) where they gave a series of lectures for a Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy Workshop at Stellenbosch University, sponsored by the RSC and the SACI (South African Chemical Institute). This coincided with the opening ceremony of the first dedicated solid-state NMR laboratory in the country. Despite giving a considerable number of lectures in just a few days Jeremy and Sharon did also manage to fit in some sightseeing. Click here for photos of the trip and here for pdf copies of the lectures.
January 2008
John Griffin, has joined the group as an EPSRC funded postdoctoral research fellow. John studied for his PhD with Dr Steven Brown at the University of Warwick, looking at applications of solid-state NMR to hydrogen-bonded systems.
