Laser

News & Events

Welcome to Meiyue, Hallam, Conlan and Jacob

Welcome to new postgraduate students Meiyue Liu, Jacob Jones, Hallam Greene, and Conlan Broderick who joined the Oliver and Orr-Ewing groups in September / October 2023 to start their PhD research. Their various projects will explore photochemical dynamics of molecular chromophores in a variety of environments from biological systems to atmospheric aerosols, and will make use of the extensive ultrafast laser facilities in our laboratories at the University of Bristol. With these laser systems, some of which were newly installed this year, the photochemical dynamics can be studied on femtosecond to microsecond timescales, allowing detailed investigation of multi-step reaction pathways.

Welcome to María and Caleb

María de los Ángeles Garavagno and Caleb Jordan have recently jointed the Bristol laser group as postdoctoral research associates. María will be working with Andrew Orr-Ewing on the NERC inHALE project investigating the impact of halocarbons on the global environment. Caleb is working with Tom Oliver on the EPSRC ultrafast photochemical dynamics in complex environments programme grant to study how chromophore-enivornment couplings alter photophysical properties of important molecules in biology.

Welcome to Meghan Oddy

Meghan Oddy (University of Cape Town, South Africa) is visiting Andrew Orr-Ewing’s group for 4 months to investigate the photophysics of thioxanthone photocatalysts. She started her PhD in 2020 working with Dr Wade Petersen, focusing on triplet energy transfer activation of photocatalysts to drive the synthesis of biologically important nitrogen-containing heterocycles. Meghan was awarded several prestigious grants to fund her visit to Bristol, including awards from the South African National Research Foundation, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the University of Cape Town.

PhD studentships available

Fully funded PhD studentships are available for postgraduate research in ultrafast photodynamics with both Dr Tom Oliver and Prof Andrew Orr-Ewing. Please contact either of these academic staff members for further details. The School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol was ranked 1st in the UK for research in Chemistry in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021) and the Oliver and Orr-Ewing groups are superbly equipped with ultrafast laser experiments. They are part of the UPDICE Programme Grant funded by EPSRC – see the UPDICE website for more details.

Fabiola Cardoso Delgado Finishes her PhD

Congratulations to Fabiola Cardoso Delgado who passed her PhD viva voce exam. In her PhD studies, Fabiola used reflectance microscopy and time-correlated single photon counting to investigate the response of iridescent chloroplasts in Phyllagathis rotundifolia to different light conditions. Fabiola is now a post-doc at the University of Southern California with Steve Bradforth.

Georgia Thornton completes her PhD

Congratulations to Georgia Thornton who successfully completed her PhD viva on 13 May 2022. Georgia’s PhD research studied the mechanisms of light-activated polymerization and photoredox-catalysed reaction cycles using transient absorption spectroscopy and computational chemistry. She will start training to become a science teacher in September 2022.

New BBSRC sLoLa grant

As part of a consortium led by Ross Anderson (Bristol Biochemistry), Tom Oliver has secured a BBSRC sLoLa grant BB/W003449/1 worth £4.9 m entitled “Creating and comprehending the circuitry of life: precise biomolecular design of multi-centre redox enzymes for a synthetic metabolism”.

The project seeks to investigate the flow of energy and electrons through individual and arrays of photoactive de novo proteins. The project encompasses protein design, modelling, synthesis and spectroscopic characterisation between groups from Bristol (Anderson, Curnow, Oliver and Mulholland), Portsmouth (Lichtenstein), UCL (Marechal) and UEA (Butt)

Within the Oliver group, ultrafast laser spectroscopies such as transient absorption, time-resolved infrared and 2D electronic spectroscopies will be used to unravel the excited state processes and the flow of energy within these designer proteins spanning femtoseconds-to-miliseconds timescales.

Giordano Amoruso completes his PhD

Congratulations to Giordano for completing his PhD with a viva voce examination in late October 2021. Giordano’s research used a variety of ultrafast spectroscopic techniques to examine bimolecular proton, electron and energy transfer processes in chemical, biological and hybrid-nanomaterial systems.

Olivia Hawkins completes her MSc(R)

Congratulations to Olivia who completed her MSc(R) degree with a viva voce examination in October 2021. Olivia’s thesis entitled “Investigating the Excited State Dynamics of 1,6-Diphenyl-1,3,5-Hexatriene Using Time Correlated Single Photon Counting” used fluorescence lifetime techniques to unravel the complicated excited state dynamics of DPH in many different solutions. Olivia has now started her PhD in the laser group.

Dr Colin Western (1957 – 2021)

Members of the Bristol group are deeply saddened by the death of their dear friend and colleague Dr Colin Western after a short illness.  Colin was widely known internationally for his development of the PGOPHER software package for simulation and fitting of high-resolution molecular spectra.  He will be greatly missed, both in Bristol and in the world-wide community of molecular spectroscopists.

Luke Lewis-Borrell completes his PhD

Congratulations to Luke Lewis-Borrell who completed his PhD with a viva voce examination of his thesis in September 2021. Luke’s PhD research was supported by the Bristol Chemical Synthesis Centre for Doctoral Training. It bridged synthetic organic chemistry and physical chemistry, using ultrafast time-resolved transient IR and UV-visible spectroscopy methods to follow multi-step reaction pathways. Examples systems studied by Luke included photoredox catalysis using organic photocatalysts, and a radical induced 1,2-metallate reaction involving boron chemistry developed by Prof Varinder Aggarwal in Bristol.

New EPSRC Programme Grant starts

The Bristol group is leading a new multi-centre, EPSRC-funded programme grant Ultrafast Photochemical Dynamics in Complex Environments (EP/V026690/1). The Bristol groups led by Andrew Orr-Ewing and Tom Oliver are joined in this major new project by Helen Fielding and Graham Worth (UCL), Basile Curchod (Durham), Jon Marangos (Imperial College), and Mark Brouard and Claire Vallance (Oxford).

Tony Kao completes his PhD

Congratulations to Min-Hsien (Tony) Kao for completing his PhD after his viva voce examination in September 2021. Tony’s PhD research explored the ultrafast photodynamics of various organic molecules including cyclic ketones and sunscreen compounds using femtosecond laser spectroscopy and computational chemistry methods.

Another Nature Comms paper is featured on an Editors’ Highlights webpage

The recent paper entitled ‘Rotational and Nuclear-Spin Level Dependent Photodissociation Dynamics of H2S’ (Nat. Comm. 12, 4459 (2021)), describing collaborative work involving Mike Ashfold, Colin Western, ex-group members Chris Hansen (now at UNSW in Sydney) and Stuart Crane (now at Heriot-Watt University) and colleagues at the Dalian Coherent Light Source has been selected to feature in a Nature Communications Editors’ Highlights collection (see here).

New EPSRC Programme Grant in Ultrafast Dynamics

Andrew Orr-Ewing and Tom Oliver have secured a new EPSRC Programme Grant EP/V026690/1 entitled “Ultrafast Photochemical Dynamics in Complex Environments”. The project is led by the University of Bristol group and is a collaboration with Helen Fielding and Graham Worth (UCL), Jon Marangos (Imperial College), Claire Vallance and Mark Brouard (Oxford), and Basile Curchod (Durham). It combines ultrafast laser spectroscopy techniques for the experimental study of gas and condensed phases systems with quantum dynamical simulations of photochemical pathways.

Ryan Phelps completes his PhD

Congratulations to Ryan Phelps for completing his PhD after his viva voce examination in May 2021. Ryan’s PhD studies involved direct observation of the formation and reactions of intermediate species such as carbenes and ylides in solution using ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh.

Olivia Hawkins wins poster prize at online SDG 2021

Congratulations to Olivia who won one of the poster prizes at the RSC’s Spectroscopy and Dynamics Group meeting (Online 11-12th January 2021). Her poster was entitled “Investigating the fluorescence properties of Diphenylhexatriene in different environments”.

Georgia Thornton and Giordano Amoruso win 3-minute video challenge prizes

Congratulations to Georgia and Giordano who won two (of 10) 3-minute video challenge prizes at the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Photophysics and Photochemistry group meeting, held online between 1st and 2nd December 2020. Giordano’s video can be viewed here.

Fred Cascarini completes his PhD

Congratulations to Fred Cascarini for completion of his PhD following his viva voce examination in September 2020.  Fred’s thesis research involved the experimental study of collisional and photodissociation dynamics in the gas phase using velocity map imaging methods, and the theoretical simulation of chemical reaction dynamics.  He now plans a legal career and will be starting a law conversion course.

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