We welcome Nisar Ahmed to the group, Nisar is a postdoc joining us as a researcher collaborator to work on peptide self replication. See his bio page for more information.

Tony has been awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry Physical Organic Chemistry Award for 2015. It is a biennially award, including a medal, cash prize and a UK lecture tour. The award was previously known as the Sir Christopher Ingold Lectureship and was founded in 1973 to commemorate Sir Ingold, the president of the RSC 1952-54.

Awarded for creative design and study of innovative functional molecular architectures, such as carbohydrate receptors and transmembrane anion transporters.

Tony Davis gained a B.A. in Chemistry from Oxford University in 1977, then stayed on for a D.Phil. under Dr. G. H. Whitham and two years’ postdoctoral work with Prof. J. E. Baldwin. In 1981 he moved to the ETH Zürich as a Royal Society European Exchange Fellow working with Prof. A. Eschenmoser, then in 1982 was appointed as a Lecturer in Organic Chemistry at Trinity College, Dublin. In September 2000 he moved to the University of Bristol, where he is Professor of Supramolecular Chemistry in the School of Chemistry. In 2002 he was awarded the Tilden Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He is currently a member of the Editorial Board of Organic and Biological Chemistry.

After some early work on synthetic methodology, especially the use of organosilicon reagents, the Davis group’s research has focused on supramolecular chemistry. A particular aim is the design of functional molecules which are both inspired by, and competitive with, biology.

Two areas which align with this theme are:

(i) Biomimetic carbohydrate recognition; the selective binding of carbohydrates under aqueous conditions by synthetic receptors, employing strategies analogous to those used by carbohydrate-binding proteins.

(ii) The recognition and transport of inorganic anions; the design, synthesis and study of molecules which bind inorganic anions strongly and selectively, and are able to carry their substrates across cell membranes. The group also has a newer programme on the crystal engineering of nanoporous solids (the design of organic molecules forming crystals with nanometer-scale pores). A company “Ziylo” has been founded to exploit the group’s work on carbohydrate sensing.

More details here: RSC Website

We are pleased to congratulate Charley Renney on passing his viva last week! Charley has started a job with HGF limited in Manchester, training as a patent attorney.

We also welcome Bahar Shirinfar to the group. Bahar is a postdoc funded by a Newton fellowship, coming to us from a previous position in Switzerland and a PhD in Korea.

We welcome David Madariaga as a visiting postdoctoral researcher, he will be working with us for 3 months, learning about synthetic lectins. This is building on studies during his PhD at University of La Rioja (Spain), on the recognition of MUC1 glycopeptides by natural lectins and the role played by the carbohydrate connected amino acids.

Shortly before Christmas the RSC Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry Meeting took place in Norwich. It is a key meeting for our field, to which some representatives of the group usually attend. This year was no exception, with Hennie and Tom making the trip to Dunston Hall. The meeting included plenary talks from speakers including Stephan Matile, Oren Sherman, Makoto Fujita, Phil Gale and David Smith. In addition to these, many flash talks were given, including one by our own Hennie. There was a packed poster session on the first evening which saw both Tom and Hennie present their work, and we are pleased to congratulate Hennie on winning a runner-up poster prize!

We welcome Joa Zhao and Blanca Alonso Jimenez for the new academic year.

Joa is joining us on an MRes program to work on carbohydrate recognition. She gained her undergraduate degree at Tianjin University, China and completed a research project on the topic of natural polymers with Prof. Jianping Gao.

Blanca is joining us an Erasmus placement, working on informational self-replication systems, as part of her undergraduate degree at the University of Salamanca, Spain.

Congratulations to Harry Destecroix who yesterday passed his viva with Prof. Stephano Roelens and Dr Craig Butts. He is currently working to launch a spin-out company called Ziylo, specializing in carbohydrate sensing.

We say goodbye to Dr Sophie Edwards who has recently passed her viva. She is going on to a job with Grant Thornton as an audit associate, where she is training to become a chartered accountant.

We congratulate the newly qualified Dr James Cooper and wish him farewell! He has moved to an ERC funded post-doctoral position with Dr Scott Cockroft in University of Edinburgh. He is working on DNA based molecular machines (bionanotechnology) as well as investigating molecular interactions using molecular balances (physical organic/synthetic supramolecular chemistry).

As a new academic year begins we are pleased to welcome Blanca Alonso Jimenez, Hamish Clark, Lucy Primmer and Toby Playfair into the group. Blanca is a visiting Spanish student visiting us through the Erasmus programme. Hamish, Lucy and Toby are MSCi students from within the university completing final year research projects.

Blanca Alonso Jimenez (Erasmus)	Hamish Clark (MSci)	Lucy Primmer (MSci)
Toby Playfair (MSci)

We say farewell to Ondrej Jurcek who has been working with us for two months, as a visiting postdoctoral researcher from the group of Prof. Kari Rissanen at University of Jyväskylä in Finland. He has been working on his own steroidal capsules and teaching us to crystallise our receptors.

We are happy to announce that Rob Tromans and Chris Dias have joined the group. Rob will be working on synthetic lectins and Chris on anion transport. They join us as part of the Chemical Synthesis CDT, having completed 8 months of extensive training, including three 7 week research placements in different groups within the department (both spending one in Davis group).

We are pleased to announce that Charley Renney won a prize for his research talk in the organic and biological chemistry section final year seminars. He was deemed to give one of the three best presentations from approximately 25 contestants.

This is a good streak for the Davis group, with James Cooper having won one last year.

Micke Lisbjerg is joining us on a 6 month placement as part of his PhD at University of Copenhagen. While Micke is working with us in the area of carbohydrate recognition, he has extensive experience studying macrocyclic anion binders, which should make for some good discussion. He has his own bio page here (though we’ve not yet managed to extract a photo from him!).

We have finally got around to taking a new group photo, just as the undergraduates are finishing!

This years RSC Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry meeting was held in Glasgow. Organised by Prof. Lee Cronin, the conference was a great opportunity for the 250 delegates to share knowledge and get to know colleagues in the field. We had a good contingent of our group in attendance, with Tom, Harry, Ash, Patrick, James, Pablo, Tiddo and Hennie making the trip. Tiddo and James presented posters with Hennie being chosen for a flash presentation.

As the new academic year begins we have recruited some new members to our group. We have Patrick Stewart, having completed an undergraduate project with us, he returns as a PhD student. Pablo Rios is joining us from Seville, on a scholarship to complete a Master of Science by Research degree. And finally we have four undergraduate students, Abigail Thorne, Joshua Phillips, Marcus Farnfield and Tom Meadley, working on research projects as a part of their degrees.

Patrick Stewart (PhD)	Pablo Rios (MRes)	Abigail Thorne (MSci)
Joshua Phillips (MSci)	Marcus Farnfield (MSci)	Tom Meadley (BSc)

We say goodbye to Lydia as her PhD comes to a finish. But wish her good luck with her prestigious new new job at Deloitte, one of the ‘Big Four’ professional services companies, maintaining the largest professional services network in the world. She will be training to become a Chartered Accountant, but fortunately will still be based in Bristol.

This year’s 8th International Symposium on Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry (ISMSC) held in Arlington, Virginia, USA proved to be an impressive event. The symposium was held over 4 days and attracted a world-wide audience of academics from the field. Cutting edge and inspirational talks were given by renowned speakers such as Sir Fraser Stoddart (Northwestern University, US), Eric V. Anslyn (University of Texas, US) and Tomoki Ogoshi (Kanazawa Univeristy, Japan). Standout talks were also presented from upcoming researchers, Chenfung Ke (Northwestern University, US) and Guillaume De Bo (University of Manchester).

James and Harry’s posters were presented with more than 250 other posters, of which the quality of research presented was exceptionally high. Over the three days 25 posters were selected for the final poster competition which took place on day four. Harry was selected by the judges to be one of the 25 finalists which was a great achievement considering the volume and level of research presented.

All in all the symposium turned out to be a great event, and our thanks go out to this year’s hosts, Lyle Isaacs and Jeffery Davis of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland and Amar Flood of the Department of Chemistry at Indiana University.

We look forward to next year’s ISMSC due to be held in Shanghai China.

We say goodbye to Ashley Brewer as he finishes in our group as a postdoc, but he is not going far. Moving over to the Physics department of Bath University, he will be employed as Undergraduate Laboratory and Safety Coordinator. He will be responsible for both overseeing and organising the undergraduate labs, and dealing with health and safety issues for the entire department. We wish him the best in his new position!