News

Congratulations to Victoria Bass, who was awarded the best undergraduate oral presentation award in the Chemistry Education division at the CSC 2015 in Ottawa (supervisor: Jackie Stewart)

Rhett Baillie Named Recipient of the 2015 Edward Piers Memorial Award in Organic Chemistry

This annual award is offered in memory of Dr. Edward Piers and in celebration of his distinguished career in the Department of Chemistry.  It is awarded to a graduate student in any branch of organic chemistry (including synthetic, bioorganic, organometallic, or materials) who demonstrates qualities of academic excellence, experimental skill, and dedication to the field through...

Congratulations to Dr. Melanie Higgins!

Dr. Higgins, a postdoctoral fellow in the Ryan group, received a 2015 Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR) Trainee Award in the Biomedical Division. She was awarded funding for the development of new antibiotics for the treatment of MRSA.

Michael Smith Foundation Health Research Trainee Awards are awarded in four divisions of health research to provide support to up-and-coming researchers across British Columbia.

Congratulations to the Love Research Group graduate students for winning Poster Prizes at the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) conference this year in Ottawa (http://www.csc2015.ca).

Marcus W. Drover, 2nd Place in Inorganic Divison

Addison N. Desnoyer, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Prize

Amidate-Ligated Complexes of Rhodium(I): A Showcase of Coordination Flexibility

A series of rhodium(I) amidate complexes have been prepared and characterized in the solution and solid state. For these new complexes, three different ligand coordination modes (κ2-N,O, μ2-N,O, and κ1-O) have been identified. One complex was effective for catalytic oxygen atom transfer using O2. In contrast to Wilkinson's catalyst (RhCl(PPh3) 3), κ2-N,O coordination helps to obviate...

Their research has been featured on the cover of the current issue of the journal ACS Photonics (May 20, 2015: Vol. 2, Iss. 5).

DNA-based nanostructures are being extensively explored as promising building blocks in the design of optical devices and electronic circuitry. In this Article, Massey and co-workers studied a time-gated Förster resonance energy transfer cascade between fluorescent dyes along the length of a 15 nm DNA photonic wire. The cover illustrates the cascade...

Universal blood is an appealing notion because it could be transfused into anyone regardless of blood type. Researchers have been kicking around the idea of using enzymes to create universal blood since the early 1980s, “but a major limitation has always been the efficiency of the enzymes,” says Stephen Withers at the University of British Columbia. “Impractically large amounts of enzyme were needed.”

Now in a paper just out in the...

Congratulations to Dr. Parisa Mehrkhodavandi. She is the recipient of the 2015 Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers.

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation was established by Germany in order to promote international cooperation in research. The Humboldt Research Fellowship Program supports highly qualified post-doctoral scholars of all nationalities and disciplines so that they may carry out long-term...

Congratulations to Dr. Mark MacLachlan, he has been awarded the 2014 Steacie Prize in the natural sciences, Canada’s top award for young scientists and engineers. The award recognizes MacLachlan’s outstanding research and scholarly contributions to the field of supramolecular inorganic chemistry.

“I’m honoured to receive the prize – I can only surmise there were no other nominees! I owe this award to the outstanding current and past students, post-docs, and collaborators I’ve been...