• Question: What question or challenge were you setting out to address when you started this work?

    Asked by shauno grouts to Shuo, Neil, Martin, Leonie, Lauren, Ciorsdaidh, Alan on 5 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      I was, and still am, trying to understand at the microscopic level of atoms and molecules how the present day Chemical Universe works… How molecules are made in space? How they affect the formation of stars? How the give the potential for life to planetary systems?

    • Photo: Neil Keddie

      Neil Keddie answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      We wanted to develop a new polar chemical group that could interact with positive and negative charged atoms (or groups) at the same time, but on difference faces. Think about the Roman god Janus (the one with two faces) – that’s what we wanted to make chemically. This new group could be used to make liquid crystal displays faster and it could be used in biologically active molecules to make new interactions with cell receptors.

    • Photo: Lauren Webster

      Lauren Webster answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      This is a tough one! Speaking for one of our current projects…We wanted to rid the world of Malaria. One single tablet to cure for less than $1 per treatment. That is less than some packets of crips or your favourite soft drink! To the people we aimed this at was not you or me but to people who don’t have the same luxuries as we do e.g. people living in poverty. I said above “wanted”, here in my group we have entered clinical trials with our potential cure. How exciting is that?!?

    • Photo: Ciorsdaidh Watts

      Ciorsdaidh Watts answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      When I started out with my PhD research I was hoping to design a new molecule that could be used to better understand how a specific protein (KifC1) was involved in cancer in humans. By the end of my PhD we had designed a new selective inhibitor of the protein and were using lots of biology experiments to see what effect it had on cancer cells and normal cells.

    • Photo: Alan McCue

      Alan McCue answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      The main thing I am interesting in working at the moment is making a new catalysts to make ethylene in propylene (look up the names to see the structure :-)). I’ve not quite figured out how to do this but am thinking about it a lot. Why is this important. Well we make polyethylene (plastic bags) form ethylene and polypropylene from propylene. At the moment we are finding a lot more ethylene than propylene but want to make more polypropylene plastics. I know that answer is a bit complex but hopefully it makes some sense 🙂

    • Photo: Leonie Bole

      Leonie Bole answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      My PhD has not focussed on one specific target but rather one main overall goal. The chemistry that I do aims to use abundant metals like magensium, lithium and sodium to carry out difficult reactions which normally require expensive transition metals. So far, I have been able to use gallium to achiever a process called hydroboration and am now looking at magnsium compounds and how they might help us to access fluorine-containing drug molecules a bit easier!

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