Old NewsFlash Items
Old NewsFlash Items
2011
Professor Stefano Caldarelli from the Institute of Molecular Sciences, Marseilles visited the Wimperis group on 30 August 2011 and gave a talk entitled "NMR of Mixtures".
Steve visited the University of St Andrews on 23-24 August 2011 for discussions about solid-state NMR of AlPOs and GaPOs with long-term collaborators Professor Richard Walton from the University of Warwick and Dr Sharon Ashbrook from the University of St Andrews.
Smita and Steve visited the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility between 8 and 10 August 2011 to run a 11B MAS NMR experiment on a sample of maerl [See Photo]. This work is part of a collaborative project with Dr Nick Kamenos and Professor Maggie Cusack of the University of Glasgow. During the visit to the 850 MHz, Steve took the opportunity to shop around for some spectrometer accessories [See Photo].
Steve visited Imperial College London on 4-5 August 2011, together with collaborators Dr John Griffin and Dr Sharon Ashbrook from the University of St Andrews, for discussions with Dr Andrew Berry about the structural chemistry of superdense hydrous silicates.
On 9 June 2011, Professor Steven Brown of the University of Warwick visited Glasgow and presented a departmental seminar entitled "Characterising Solid-State Structures Formed by Organic Molecules: What Can NMR Contribute?". In the evening, Steven joined Steve and Dr Sharon Ashbrook for dinner in Glasgow's fashionable West End. The following day, Steve and Steven continued their discussions either on or very near the summit of The Cobbler [See Photo].
On 20 May 2011, Steve attended the dinner following the 10th Bill Carruthers Symposium, which this year was held at the University of York, along with former Exeter Chemistry colleagues from Sheffield, Queen Mary, Nottingham, York, Warwick, Birmingham and Exeter.
Smita, Hernan and Steve attended the 1st Annual Symposium of the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility on 4 April 2011, which this year was held at the University of Warwick. Steve organised the scientific programme for the meeting, which was a roaring success, and chaired the opening session.
Steve visited the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility between 24 and 28 March 2011 to run 1H-17O two-dimensional correlation NMR experiments on superdense hydrous silicates. Steve worked with Dr John Griffin, a collaborator from the University of St Andrews.
Teresa had her PhD viva on Friday 18 March 2011 and is now Dr Teresa Kurkiewicz! Her examiners were Dr Jeremy Titman (Nottingham) and Dr Justin Hargreaves (Glasgow).
Hernan, Smita and Steve attended the First Annual Meeting of the St Andrews Centre of Magnetic Resonance in St Andrews (11-12 March 2011). Smita presented a poster entitled "NMR Spin-Locking of Half-Integer Quadrupolar Nuclei: The Far Off-Resonance Case".
Steve has been elected to the Council of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance (ISMAR) for the period 2011-13.
2010
Welcome to three new members of the Wimperis NMR Group! Dr Hernan Ahumada has arrived from the University of Santiago, Chile on a two-year postdoctoral fellowship, Smita Odedra has started her PhD studies, and Anna Nowak has joined as a final-year MSci project student.
The paper "High-Resolution 19F MAS NMR Spectroscopy: Structural Disorder and Unusual J Couplings in a Fluorinated Hydroxy-Silicate", written by John Griffin, Jonathan Yates, Andrew Berry, Steve and Sharon Ashbrook, has been published in J. Am. Chem. Soc., the leading chemistry journal. [Get Reprint]
Steve visited the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility between 3 and 13 December 2010 to run 17O STMAS and MQMAS NMR experiments on superdense hydrous silicates. Steve worked with Drs John Griffin and Sharon Ashbrook, his collaborators from the University of St Andrews.
On 28 October, Steve attended the official opening of the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility by Professor David Delpy, Chief Executive of EPSRC [See Photo].
Multiple congratulations to Smita Odedra! Smita worked with Steve during 2009-2010 on her final-year BSc research project and was awarded (a) the prize for best poster presentation of her research project, (b) a First Class degree, (c) the prize for the best performance in Physical Chemistry by a final-year student, and (d) the prize for best BSc student! That's quite some list of achievements.
Sales of NMR: The Toolkit by P. J. Hore, J. A. Jones and S. Wimperis have passed the 5000 mark. As the book was published in August 2000, this represents sales averaging 500 copies a year. (Note that the authors have earned many tens of pounds from this project!)
The paper "Dynamics on the Microsecond Timescale in Hydrous Silicates Studied by Solid-State 2H NMR Spectroscopy", written by John Griffin, Andrew Miller, Andrew Berry, Steve and Sharon Ashbrook, has been published in Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. [Get Reprint].
Steve's position as Head of Physical Chemistry in the new School of Chemistry has now been confirmed and he has also joined the WestCHEM Management Group.
Steve was Acting Head of Department here in Glasgow for the week 12-16 July. One of his more pleasant "duties" was to attend the RSC President's Dinner, held at the Hotel du Vin on 13 July [See Photo].
Steve visited the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility for 10 days between 28 June and 7 July 2010 to run 69Ga, 71Ga, 14N and 2H MAS NMR experiments. Steve worked with his collaborator from the ENS in Paris, Dr Luminita Duma, on the 14N and 2H experiments [See Photo].
Congratulations on a fantastic achievement! Former Wimperis group DPhil student Steven Brown has been promoted to Professor by the University of Warwick with effect from 1 October 2010.
2009
Steve spent September and October in Paris, working with Dr Luminita Duma and the group of Professor Geoffrey Bodenhausen at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) [See Photo]. Steve was awarded a "Research in Paris" grant by the ville de Paris to work at the ENS. The research project involved developing 2H and 14N MAS NMR methods for studying dynamics in solids. During his time in France, Steve also gave research talks in Paris, Lyon and Lausanne, Switzerland, and visited the CEHMTI labotoratory in Orléans to perform experiments on the 750 MHz NMR spectrometer.
Teresa visited Steve at the ENS in Paris (22-25 September 2009) and helped to shim a new MAS probe [See Photo].
Sharon and Steve's paper "Spin-Locking of Half-Integer Quadrupolar Nuclei in NMR of Solids: Second-Order Quadrupolar and Resonance Offset Effects" has been published in J. Chem. Phys. [Get Reprint].
Steve attended the 6th Alpine Conference on Solid-State NMR in Chamonix, France (13-17 September 2009) and chaired probably the best session at the meeting, which included talks by Sharon Ashbrook and James Yesinowski.
Sharon, Michael, Jamie and Steve's paper "Second-Order Cross-Term Interactions in High-Resolution MAS NMR of Quadrupolar Nuclei" has been published in Prog. NMR Spectrosc. [Get Reprint].
A special "Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy" themed issue of the journal PCCP has appeared, with Paul Hodgkinson and Steve as Guest Editors. The special issue contains 22 excellent papers, including two specially commissioned Perspectives articles authored by Sharon Ashbrook and Anne Lesage.
Double congratulations! Former Wimperis group DPhil student and postdoc Dr Sharon Ashbrook has been promoted to Reader by the University of St Andrews with effect from 1 August 2009 and has been awarded the 2009 BRSG-NMRDG Annual Prize for Excellent Contribution to Magnetic Resonance by an Early Career Researcher.
Dr Marica Cutajar formally graduated from the University of Glasgow on 2 July 2009 [See Photo].
Marica and Steve's paper "Transformation of AlPO-53 to JDF-2: Reversible Dehydration of a Templated Aluminophosphate Studied by MAS NMR and Diffraction", written with collaborators Sharon Ashbrook and Richard Walton and their respective postdocs John Griffin and Zoe Lethbridge, has been published in J. Phys. Chem. C [Get Reprint].
Steve and Sharon Ashbrook attended the CSC 2009 conference in Hamilton, Ontario from 30 May to 2 June 2009 [See Photo].
On 30 April 2009, Steve presented a talk entitled "Structure and Dynamics in "Superdense" Magnesium Silicate Phases from the Earth's Mantle" at the Spring Meeting of the Royal Society of Chemistry's NMRDG held in Loughborough.
On 23 April 2009, Professor Malcolm Levitt FRS of the University of Southampton visited Glasgow and presented a departmental seminar entitled "Singlet Nuclear Magnetic Resonance". Afterwards, Malcolm joined Steve and Hans Martin Senn for dinner in Glasgow's fashionable West End.
Steve and Teresa, together with the St Andrews NMR group, visited California from 27 March to 4 April 2009 and attended the 50th Experimental NMR Conference ("ENC") at Asilomar, Pacific Grove [See Photo]. Steve gave a 12-minute talk entitled "New High-Resolution Quadrupolar NMR Techniques for the Study of Fast- and Intermediate-Timescale Dynamics in Solids" [Read Abstract] while Teresa presented a poster entitled "Second-Order Quadrupolar Shifts as an NMR Probe of Fast Molecular-Scale Dynamics in Solids".
Steve and Sharon Ashbrook have co-authored two articles for the updated Encyclopedia of Magnetic Resonance entitled "Advances in STMAS" and "Quadrupolar Coupling: An Introduction and Crystallographic Aspects".
Teresa, Michael and Steve's paper "Second-Order Quadrupolar Shifts as an NMR Probe of Fast Molecular-Scale Dynamics in Solids" has been published in Chem. Phys. Lett. [Get Reprint]. This paper has the distinction of being Teresa's 1st publication and (by his count) Steve's 100th! It was also selected as Editor's Choice (!) but, sadly, a mistake at the editorial office meant that this was not communicated to the journal and it has appeared as a normal paper [See Letter].
Steve's 1997 paper with Steven Brown "Two-Dimensional Multiple-Quantum MAS NMR of Quadrupolar Nuclei: A Comparison of Methods" has now been cited 100 times [Get Reprint]. This paper formed the core of Steven Brown's DPhil research with Steve in Oxford between 1994 and 1997.
Dr Dinu Iuga (Warwick), the newly appointed Manager of the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility, visited the Wimperis group on 10 February 2009. The 850 MHz NMR spectrometer should be installed this summer at the University of Warwick.
Long-term collaborators Dr Richard Walton (Warwick) and Dr Sharon Ashbrook (St Andrews) visited the Wimperis group on 9 February 2009 for talks about on-going research into structure and dynamics in open-framework aluminophosphate (AlPO) materials.
The paper "Solid-State 17O NMR Spectroscopy of Hydrous Magnesium Silicates: Evidence for Proton Dynamics", written by John Griffin, Steve, Andrew Berry, Chris Pickard and Sharon Ashbrook, has been published in J. Phys. Chem. [Get Reprint].
2008
Steve travelled to London and attended the Christmas Meetings of BRSG: The Magnetic Resonance Group and the Royal Society of Chemistry's NMRDG on 10 and 11 December 2008, respectively.
Marica had her PhD viva on Wednesday 3 December 2008 and is now Dr Marica Cutajar! Her examiners were Dr Steven Brown (Warwick) and Dr Justin Hargreaves (Glasgow). Unexpectedly, the viva proved the occasion for a significant gathering of Steve's current and former PhD students [See Photo].
Having come to the end of his 3-year EPSRC-funded postdoc position, Michael Thrippleton has left the group to work on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the female pelvis (!) in Edinburgh.
On 25 September 2008, Professor Peter Hore of the University of Oxford visited Glasgow and presented a departmental seminar entitled "Do Birds have a Chemical Compass?". Afterwards, Peter joined Steve, Adrian Lapthorn and Hans Martin Senn for dinner in Glasgow's fashionable West End.
Marica and Steve'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", written with collaborators Sharon Ashbrook, Chris Pickard and Richard Walton, has been published in Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. [Get Reprint].
Tom had his PhD viva on Friday 15 August 2008 and is now Dr Thomas J. Ball! His examiners were Dr Paul Hodgkinson (Durham) and Dr Brian Smith (Glasgow).
Steve attended the 50th Rocky Mountain Conference on Analytical Chemistry, which was held 27-31 July 2008 in the beautiful skiing resort of Breckenridge, Colorado, USA. He presented a talk entitled "New High-Resolution Quadrupolar NMR Techniques for the Study of Fast- and Intermediate-Timescale Dynamics in Solids" - and also "bagged" his first Thirteener [See Photo]!
The Jaccard, Wimperis, and Bodenhausen paper "Multiple-Quantum NMR Spectroscopy of S = 3/2 Spins in Isotropic Phase: a New Probe for Multiexponential Relaxation" has now been cited more than 200 times [Get Reprint]. This, and related work on relaxation-allowed coherence transfer in 1H systems, formed the bulk of Steve's PhD thesis in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Professor Scott Kroeker from the University of Manitoba visited the Wimperis group 13-14 May 2008 [See Photo].
Professor Rob Schurko from the University of Windsor, Ontario visited the Wimperis group 19-24 April 2008.
The poster "An Investigation of Structurally-Bound Water Dynamics in High-Pressure Hydrous Magnesium Silicates combining First-Principles DFT Calculations and 17O Solid-State NMR Experimental Data" by J. Griffin, C. E. Pringle, A. J. Berry, S. Wimperis, C. J. Pickard, and S. E. Ashbrook was awarded the Best Poster Prize at the ScotCHEM Computational Chemistry Symposium held on 2 April 2008 at the University of Glasgow.
Michael, Marica and Steve's paper "Magic Angle Spinning (MAS) NMR Linewidths in the Presence of Solid-State Dynamics" has been published - as Editor's Choice!!! - in Chem. Phys. Lett. [Get Reprint].
Steve has been on 850 MHz NMR spectrometer "demo" visits to Zurich, Switzerland (27-28 Feb 2008) and Fort Collins, Colorado, USA (17-18 Mar 2008), together with his colleagues Dr Steven Brown (Warwick), Dr Melinda Duer (Cambridge), and Dr Jeremy Titman (Nottingham) [See Photo].
Michael, Tom and Steve's paper "Satellite Transitions Acquired in Real Time by Magic Angle Spinning (STARTMAS): "Ultrafast" High-Resolution MAS NMR Spectroscopy of Spin I = 3/2 Nuclei" has finally been published in J. Chem. Phys. [Get Reprint]. Steve's original notes on STARTMAS now have pride of place in the Wimperis group archive [See Photo].
2007
A consortium consisting of Steve, his former DPhil students Dr Sharon Ashbrook (St Andrews) and Dr Steven Brown (Warwick), Dr Melinda Duer (Cambridge), Professor Robin Harris (Durham) and Dr Jeremy Titman (Nottingham) has been awarded £3.8M by EPSRC and BBSRC to set up a National 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility at the University of Warwick [Read Press Release].
The Wimperis group held their 2007 Christmas Dinner at Corinthian in Glasgow city centre on Sunday 16 December [See Photo].
Steve organized the Christmas Meeting of BRSG: The Magnetic Resonance Group, which was held at the Institute of Physics in London on Tuesday 11 December 2007. The following day, Steve, Michael and Teresa also went to the morning session of the Royal Society of Chemistry's NMRDG Christmas Meeting.
Marica, Moira and Steve's paper "Effects of Spin Diffusion on Spin-Lattice Relaxation in Solid-State 2H MAS NMR Spectroscopy" has been published in Chem. Phys. Lett. [Get Reprint]. Moira did her BSc research project in the group in 2006-7 and is now studying for a Master's degree at Queen's University Belfast.
Sharon and Steve's paper "17O and 29Si NMR Parameters of MgSiO3 Phases from High-Resolution Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy and First-Principles Calculations" has been published in J. Am. Chem. Soc. [Get Reprint]. Our other collaborators on this project include Andrew Berry, Alan Gregorovic, Chris Pickard and Jenny Readman.
On 16 November 2007, Dr Melinda Duer of the University of Cambridge visited Glasgow and presented a departmental seminar entitled "Probing Organic-Mineral Interfaces in Biomaterials: A Solid-State NMR Approach". Afterwards, Melinda joined Steve and Sharon Ashbrook for dinner in Glasgow's Merchant City.
Steve, Tom, Marica and Teresa attended the 5th Alpine Conference on Solid-State NMR, which was held 9-13 September 2007 in Chamonix, France. The three junior members of the group all presented excellent posters. Solid-state NMR in Scotland was further represented at the meeting by the Ashbrook Group.
Steve has been elected to serve on the Committee of BRSG: The Magnetic Resonance Group, a subject group of the Institute of Physics (IoP). Founded in 1956 by, amongst others, Raymond Andrew and Rex Richards, BRSG originally stood for British Radiofrequency Spectroscopy Group.
Tom and Steve's paper "Use of SPAM and FAM Pulses in High-Resolution MAS NMR Spectroscopy of Quadrupolar Nuclei" has been published in J. Magn. Reson. [Get Reprint].
Steve gave a talk entitled "Solid-State NMR of Quadrupolar Nuclei: New Methods for Studying Structure and Dynamics in Minerals and Microporous Materials" at the 90th Canadian Chemistry Conference, held 26-30 May 2007 in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Steve attended the 48th ENC, held 22-27 April 2007 in Daytona Beach, Florida, and presented a talk entitled "High-Resolution NMR of Quadrupolar Nuclei: New Methods for Studying Structure and Dynamics" [Read Abstract]. The highlight of this talk was the presentation of new results from our "ultrafast" STARTMAS technique.
Steve was promoted to Professor of Magnetic Resonance with effect from 1 February 2007.
Sales of NMR: The Toolkit by P. J. Hore, J. A. Jones and S. Wimperis have passed the 4000 mark.
Steve attended the EU NMRLife Coordination Action Workshop: Internal Mobility in Biomolecules, held 8-9 February 2007 in Paris, and presented a talk entitled "Dynamics in Solids".
On 9 February 2007 (a busy day!), Dr Jeremy Titman of the University of Nottingham visited Glasgow and presented a departmental seminar entitled "Dynamics and Heterogeneity: Solid-State NMR from Nanocomposites to Nucleotides". Afterwards, Jeremy joined Steve, Sharon Ashbrook and Duncan Gregory for dinner in nearby Byres Road.
Michael and Steve gave a short series of lectures on NMR here in Glasgow in January 2007. Steve's "Basics" lecture can be found here. Michael's "Assignment" lecture can be found here. Michael's "Structure determination" lecture can be found here.
2006
On 22 November 2006, Steve visited the School of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham and gave a lecture entitled "Solid-State NMR of Quadrupolar Nuclei: New Methods and Applications".
Teresa Kurkiewicz joined the group in October 2006 as a new PhD student. Teresa graduated in Analytical Chemistry from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland in 2006.
Our paper "STARTMAS: a MAS-based Method for Acquiring Isotropic NMR Spectra of Spin I = 3/2 Nuclei in Real Time" has been published in Chem. Phys. Lett. [Get Reprint]. STARTMAS can be used to either obtain one-dimensional DOR-like spectra or provide an "ultrafast" route to high-resolution two-dimensional spin I = 3/2 NMR spectra. STARTMAS was first presented at the 47th Experimental NMR Conference in Pacific Grove, California (23-28 April 2006) and a number of the leading figures in quadrupolar NMR showed great interest, including Jean-Paul Amoureux and Zhehong Gan. Amazingly Steve's original notes on the idea are dated 5 February 2004 [See Photo]!
Steve, Marica, Tom and Michael attended the 50th Jubilee Meeting of the British Radiofrequency Spectroscopy Group (BRSG) in Nottingham (5-6 September 2006). Steve gave a talk entitled "High-Resolution NMR of Quadrupolar Nuclei in Solids".
Andrew Berry and Sharon Ashbrook visited Glasgow on 14-15 August 2006 for discussions about our long-running collaboration on high-resolution 17-O NMR of superdense silicate phases from the Earth's mantle [See Photo].
At the EUROMAR 2006 conference in York (16-21 July 2006), Steve gave a talk in the "Methods in Solids" session. The other three speakers in the session were Sasa Antonijevic, Sharon Ashbrook and Steven Brown - all ex-Wimperis group PhD or DPhil students!
The group have recently had two papers published in J. Am. Chem. Soc. ("Nuclear Overhauser Effect (NOE) Enhancement of 11-B NMR Spectra of Borane Adducts in the Solid State" J. Am. Chem. Soc. 128, 6782-6783 (2006) [Read Abstract] and "Dynamics on the Microsecond Timescale in Microporous Aluminophosphate AlPO-14 as Evidenced by 27-Al MQMAS and STMAS NMR Spectroscopy" J. Am. Chem. Soc. 128, 8054-8062 (2006) [Read Abstract]).
Marica's first paper has appeared as Chem. Phys. Lett. 423, 276-281 (2006) ("2H Double-Quantum MAS NMR Spectroscopy as a Probe of Dynamics on the Microsecond Timescale in Solids" [Read Abstract]), while Steve's review of the MQMAS technique ("Quadrupolar NMR of Inorganic Materials: The Multiple-Quantum Magic Angle Spinning Experiment") has been published in the book "Modern Magnetic Resonance" (G. A. Webb, Ed., Vol. 3, Springer, Dordrecht, 2006).
Dr Alan Gregorovic joined the group in June 2006 as a Leverhulme Trust-funded postdoctoral research fellow. Alan is a physicist who did his PhD with Professor Robert Blinc at Ljubljana University in Slovenia and has also carried out postdoctoral research in Milan and Ljubljana.
Steve and Sharon Ashbrook visited Dr Stefan Steuernagel at Bruker BioSpin GmbH, Rheinstetten, Germany in February 2006 to perform the first STARTMAS experiments [See Photo]. STARTMAS was unveiled officially at the 47th Experimental NMR Conference in Pacific Grove, California (23-28 April 2006) and a number of the leading figures in quadrupolar NMR showed great interest, including Jean-Paul Amoureux and Zhehong Gan. Sharon and Marica also attended the ENC with Steve [See Photo].
Dr Michael Thrippleton joined the group in January 2006 as an EPSRC-funded postdoctoral research fellow. Michael did his PhD at Cambridge University with Dr James Keeler and has recently completed a two-year postdoc at MIT with Professor Bob Griffin.
Steve's paper "High-Resolution 17O MAS NMR Spectroscopy of Forsterite (α-Mg2SiO4), Wadsleyite (β-Mg2SiO4), and Ringwoodite (γ-Mg2SiO4)", written with long-time collaborators Sharon Ashbrook, Andrew Berry and Stefan Steuernagel, has appeared as Am. Mineral. 90, 1861-1870 (2005) [Read Abstract]. In February 2006, Steve and Sharon met Andrew Berry in Frankfurt and collected a further series of 17O-enriched superdense silicate samples.
2005
Sharon and Steve's paper "Rotor-Synchronization of Quadrupolar Satellite-Transition NMR spectra: Practical Aspects and Double-Quantum Filtration" has appeared as J. Magn. Reson. 177, 44-55 (2005) [Read Abstract]. Sharon also talked about this work this summer at the 47th Rocky Mountain Conference in Denver, Colorado.
Christmas 2005: Marica, Tom and Steve attended two one-day NMR meetings in London: the Institute of Physics' BRSG meeting and the Royal Society of Chemistry's NMRDG meeting. Marica gave a talk at the BRSG meeting entitled "2H Double-Quantum MAS NMR Studies of Motion in Solids" while, at the NMRDG, the group was delighted to witness ex-member Dr Sharon Ashbrook being awarded the Harrison Memorial Medal for the second time (see below)!
Ex-Wimperis group member Dr Sharon Ashbrook was awarded the 2004 Harrison Memorial Medal and Prize by the Royal Society of Chemistry for "the most meritorious and promising original investigations in physical chemistry" carried out by a British chemist under the age of 30 years. The Medal was presented to Sharon at a glittering awards ceremony held at the Birmingham Hilton Metropole on Friday 18 November 2005 [See Photo]. Much of the research cited for the award was performed by Sharon during her 6 years with the Wimperis group. Sharon now has a permanent academic position at the University of St Andrews.
Steve, Jenny, Tom and Marica attended the 4th Alpine Conference on Solid-State NMR, which was held 11-15 September 2005 in Chamonix, France. Steve presented a talk entitled "2H double-quantum MAS NMR studies of motion in polymers and other solids", while Jenny, Tom and Marica all presented excellent posters. Marica's poster, "The Study of Motion using 2H Double-Quantum MAS NMR", was awarded the Regitze R. Vold Memorial Prize for the best poster presented by a student.
Steve, Tom and Marica attended Euromar 2005, which was held 3-8 July in Veldhoven in the Netherlands. Marica presented a short talk and poster entitled "Use of 2H Double-Quantum MAS NMR for Studying Molecular Motion in Solids" [See Photo].
At Euromar 2005, the Wimperis group were lucky enough to catch two of the Greats of quadrupolar NMR deep in intellectual debate about the vital importance of pure-phase lineshapes [See Photo]!
Ex-Wimperis group member Dr Nick Dowell has finally left Exeter to take up a new post as an MRI Physicist in the Institute of Neurology, University College London. However, he remains in intimate contact with at least one member of the group.
Jenny has come back from her nine-week trip "Down Under" where she worked with Dr Andrew Berry at the Australian National University in Canberra. Jenny used piston-cylinder and multi-anvil apparatuses to prepare a number of super-dense silicate phases for study by high-resolution 17O NMR [See Photo].
Sasa and Steve's paper "Separation of Quadrupolar and Chemical/Paramagnetic Shift Interactions in Two-Dimensional 2H (I = 1) NMR Spectroscopy" has been published as J. Chem. Phys. 122, 044312 (2005) (14 pages) [Read Abstract].
2004
The Wimperis group, including Dr Nick Dowell, turned out in fine style at the last-ever (Exeter) Department of Chemistry Christmas Party in December 2004 [See Photo].
The Wimperis group has been awarded £222,680 by EPSRC for a project entitled Satellite-Transition MAS: A New Technique for High-Resolution Quadrupolar NMR, £66,189 by the Leverhulme Trust for a project entitled High-Resolution 17O NMR Studies of High-Pressure Silicate Phases and £75,958 by EPSRC for a project entitled Novel 2H NMR Methods for Studying Quadrupolar and Shielding Interactions in Dia- and Paramagnetic Solids. Steve is the principal applicant on all of these grants.
A photo has recently come to light from the days when Steve worked in biomedical NMR. Steve and Richard were recording the NMR spectrum of the cartilage in Professor Peter Styles' nose using a surface coil designed by Peter. This (published) work was carried out in the research group of Professor Sir George Radda, who later went on to become Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council.
It's a boy! Steve's first DPhil student, Dr Richard Kemp-Harper, and his wife Julie are now the proud parents of Aidan Joseph, born 15 November 2004. Doubtless, young Aidan will be tackling his first vector-model problems within a year or two.
Nick had his PhD viva on Tuesday 2 November 2004 and is now Dr Nicholas G. Dowell! His examiners were Dr Melinda Duer (Cambridge) and Professor Tony Legon, FRS (Exeter).
Two new PhD students, Tom Ball and Marica Cutajar, have joined the group. Both graduated this summer (2004), Tom in Chemistry from the University of Oxford and Marica in Chemistry and Physics from the University of Malta.
Nick, Sharon and Steve's paper "Satellite-Transition MAS NMR of Low-γ Nuclei at Natural Abundance: Sensitivity, Practical Implementation, and Application to 39K (I = 3/2) and 25Mg (I = 5/2)" has been published as J. Phys. Chem. B 108, 13292-13299 (2004). We believe this paper presents the first ever examples of "isotropic" 25Mg NMR spectra recorded at the natural isotopic abundance of 10% [Read Abstract].
Sharon and Steve's epic review "High-Resolution NMR of Quadrupolar Nuclei in Solids: the Satellite-Transition Magic Angle Spinning (STMAS) Experiment" has now appeared as Prog. NMR Spectrosc. 45, 53-108 (2004). Contact Steve (s.wimperis@chem.gla.ac.uk) if you would like a reprint (available as hardcopy or PDF).
Steve has returned from the Anglo-German Magnetic Resonance Meeting in Aachen, Germany, where he presented a poster on his two-dimensional 2H NMR work with Sasa Antonijevic.
Sales of that popular classic, NMR: The Toolkit by P. J. Hore, J. A. Jones and S. Wimperis, have now passed the 3000 mark.
We have received assessors' comments on our final report on the EPSRC grant GR/N07622 that supported Sharon and Sasa. These included: "I would be very surprised if many other comparable grants have yielded a better output"; "This has been an outstanding piece ... of research work"; and "The quality of the papers written as a result of this grant have not been bettered by any other group." Not surprisingly then, EPSRC has now rated the research quality as "internationally leading" and the final report as "outstanding" overall.
Sharon and Steve's paper "Spin-Locking of Half-Integer Quadrupolar Nuclei in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance of Solids: Creation and Evolution of Coherences" has been published in J. Chem. Phys. 120, 2719-2731 (2004) [Read Abstract].
Steve has just returned from the 45th Experimental NMR Conference (ENC) in Asilomar, Pacific Grove, California, where he presented a poster entitled "17O NMR of Dense Silicate Phases from the Deep Earth".
Sasa is now Dr Sasa Antonijevic! He successfully defended his PhD thesis on 14 April 2004. Dr Jeremy Titman (Nottingham) and Professor Patrick Fowler (Exeter) were his examiners and were impressed by both his conciseness (!) and his willingness to think about topics outside the immediate content of his thesis.
Dr Sharon Ashbrook (University of Cambridge) visited Exeter 16-21 March 2004 to use the excellent NMR facilities here and to work with Steve on some ideas for new experiments.
Steve has just come back from Berlin, where he gave a talk entitled "High-Resolution NMR of Quadrupolar Nuclei in Solids: the Satellite-Transition MAS Experiment" at a Berlin Magnetic Resonance Seminar. This was also an opportunity for Steve to catch up with his old chum Professor Hartmut Oschkinat and the two could be found admiring the local scenery and drinking German beer in a surprisingly large number of East-side bars until the early hours of the morning.
Steve has just returned from Aberystwyth where he examined an MPhil thesis and gave a talk on STMAS NMR to Dr Rudi Winter and co-workers. This visit was the latest in a trio of recent trips for Steve. Earlier in February he gave a research seminar in Durham, while in January he visited Lille, where he was the guest of Professor Jean-Paul Amoureux and gave a talk.
2003
Sasa and Steve's paper "High-Resolution NMR Spectroscopy in Inhomogeneous B0 and B1 Fields by Two-Dimensional Correlation" has been published in Chem. Phys. Lett. 381, 634-641 (2003). This paper is all about magnetic field gradients and 1H (I = 1/2) NMR of liquids and includes details of a homebuilt NMR probe [Read Abstract]!
There has been further success with our collaborative project with Dr Andrew Berry (ANU, Canberra, Australia) on the NMR study of silicates from the deep Earth. Our paper "High-Resolution 17O NMR of Wadsleyite (β-Mg2SiO4)" has been published as a Communication in J. Am. Chem. Soc. 125, 11824-11825 (2003) [Read Abstract].
Dr Angelika Sebald has been appointed to a one-year Lectureship in Physical Chemistry, here in Exeter. This is the position arising from the award of a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship to Steve. The combination of Steve and Angelika's skills and expertise promise to make this an exciting year! Angelika will also be bringing her PhD student, Matthias Bechmann, to Exeter.
Ex-Wimperis group member, Dr Sharon Ashbrook, has been awarded a highly prestigious Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellowship to work in Cambridge for four years. As she also holds the Charles and Katherine Darwin Research Fellowship at Darwin College, Cambridge, this means that Sharon's signature line will now be longer than most of her e-mails!
Sasa has left the Wimperis group to begin a post-doc with Professor Geoffrey Bodenhausen in Lausanne, Switzerland. As a leaving present, his friends and colleagues from the Dept. of Chemistry presented Sasa with a cashmere scarf and a bottle of Talisker whisky to help to keep him warm in the Alpine Region.
The Wimperis group has returned from the 3rd Alpine Conference on Solid-State NMR in Chamonix. Some photos of the trip can be found in the Pictures section.
Sharon and Steve's epic paper "SCAM-STMAS: Satellite-Transition MAS NMR of Quadrupolar Nuclei with Self-Compensation for Magic-Angle Misset" has been published in J. Magn. Reson. 162, 402-416 (2003) [Read Abstract].
Steve has gone Stateside (26 July to 10 August 2003) where he will be giving a talk at the 45th Rocky Mountain Conference on Analytical Chemistry, entitled: "Satellite-Transition MAS NMR of Quadrupolar Nuclei in Solids: New Techniques, Applications and Observations". Steve will also will give a talk at the Bruker Solid-State NMR Symposium and attend the Varian 14th Annual Workshop on Advanced Topics in Solid State NMR.
Steve has been awarded a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship for the 12 months starting October 2003. This gets Steve out of teaching for a year by providing funds for a replacement Temporary Lecturer and allows Steve to concentrate on research.
Ex-Wimperis group member Sharon Ashbrook has been elected to the Charles and Katherine Darwin Research Fellowship by Darwin College, Cambridge.
Steve has just come back from three days in Cambridge where he has been working with Sharon Ashbrook on the 500 MHz Varian Infinity Plus. They have succeeded in implementing the STMAS experiment on the 4-mm Chemagnetics T3 MAS probe and found a sensitivity enhancement over MQMAS of a factor of 6.
Steve and Sasa are in Savannah Georgia (30 March to 4 April 2003) for the 44th ENC. Steve is giving a talk and Sasa is presenting a poster.
Look out shortly for an exciting collaboration between three of the world's great research institutions: the Weizmann Institute, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Exeter! [This heavily ironic comment has taken on a more bitter flavour since Exeter closed its Department of Chemistry.] Sharon and Steve's paper with Sungsool Wi and Lucio Frydman about the observation of quadrupolar-CSA cross terms should be appearing shortly in J. Chem. Phys. [Read Abstract].
2002
Dr Sharon Ashbrook (University of Cambridge) visited the group for a week starting on 12 December 2002. She conducted some experiments on the Avance 400 machine.
Sharon, Sasa and Steve's paper, "Motional Broadening: an Important Distinction between Multiple-Quantum and Satellite-Transition MAS NMR of Quadrupolar Nuclei" has been published in Chem. Phys. Lett. 364, 634 (2002) [Read Abstract].
The Wimperis Group attended the BRSG conference on "The NMR of Electric Quadrupolar and Paramagnetic Materials" in London on 4 December 2002. Steve gave a talk entitled "Recent Advances in High-Resolution NMR of Quadrupolar Nuclei in Solids". Sasa and Nick also presented posters.
EPSRC has now assessed the grant GR/M12209, which supported Jamie McManus and Kevin Pike between 1998 and 2001 (see EPSRC Reports). They assessed the research quality to be "internationally leading" and judged the work to be "outstanding" overall.
Dr Sharon Ashbrook has left the Wimperis group to take up a teaching fellowship at the University of Cambridge. Sharon's remarkable abilities in both teaching and research, together with her friendly and calm demeanour, mean that she will be sorely missed.
The group is attending the Anglo-French NMR Meeting at the University of Southampton, 4-7 September 2002. The event is preceded by a half-day symposium to mark the opening of Professor Malcolm Levitt's solid-state NMR facility.
Nicola McDougal (University of Cambridge) is visiting the group 21-23 August. She will use our new triple-resonance probe to complete some experiments for her PhD thesis.
After a long and tortuous wait, Sharon and Steve's SCAM-STMAS paper has been accepted for publication in J. Am. Chem. Soc.
Nick's paper "Relative Orientation of Quadrupole Tensors from High-Resolution NMR of Powdered Solids" has been accepted for publication by J. Phys. Chem. A.
Sharon's latest STMAS paper entitled "Satellite-Transition MAS NMR of Spin I = 3/2, 5/2, 7/2 and 9/2 Nuclei: Sensitivity, Resolution and Practical Implementation" has been published as J. Magn. Reson. 156, 269-281 (2002) [Read Abstract].
Dr Jeremy Titman (University of Nottingham) came to Exeter to give an enlightening talk about his work, on 22 May 2002. His visit gave us an opportunity to share ideas about our work. In the evening Jeremy and the Wimperis group dined at the Hotel Barcelona.
Dr Mark Smith (University of Warwick) visited the Wimperis group on 8-9 May 2002. He gave a very interesting talk and was able to discuss some of our current projects with the group members. Afterwards, Dr Walton joined Mark and the group for an immensely enjoyable evening meal at the Mill on the Exe.
