News
19th March 2024: Alastair has won the 2024 Bright SCIdea Challenge as part of a team of PhD students from the University of Birmingham! They have been awarded £5000 to develop their idea of a fully degradable fertiliser to improve soil health. Congratulations to Alastair and the team!
14th March 2024: Our paper on the [NCCCO]- cyanoketenate anion has been published in Angewandte Chemie! Thank you to all our collaborators in China and Canada, it was a very fun project.
12th March 2024: Andy has been elected to the UK Young Academy. He will attend a two-day induction next week and then start his 5-year term as part of this new organisation trying to make a societal difference.
28th February 2024: The group have moved into their fantastic new laboratory space in the Molecular Sciences Building. We can't wait to start making new discoveries in this great collaborative environment.
23rd February 2024: The group's first paper on azophosphines, the phosphorus-containing analogues of triazenes, has been uploaded to ChemRxiv. This topic has been the focus of Emma's PhD so congratulations for getting this project over the line.
5th February 2024: Our pre-print on the synthesis and reactivity of the cyanoketenate anion [NCCCO]- is online on ChemRxiv. This is part of our continued collaboration with the Xu group on the functionalisation of carbon monoxide, and features some interesting computational results by Laura.
18th December 2023: Andy and Alastair represented the group at the RSC Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry Meeting in Birmingham. Andy gave a talk and Alastair presented a poster on his PhD work. It was a great conference and a very friendly chemistry community.
6th December 2023: Andy travelled to the University of Bath to talk about the group's research. Thank you to Dr Marina Uzelac for being such an excellent host.
16th November 2023: Andy gave the McCamley Lecture at the University of York, and had a fantastic time meeting all the students over the two days.
8th September 2023: Andy has won the 2023 Early Career Award from the Inorganic Reaction Mechanisms Group of the RSC! A massive thank you to all the team and collaborators for making this possible.
25th September 2023: Welcome to our new Masters students Izzy and Lewis! They will spend the next 11 weeks with the group working in the lab (Izzy) and behind a computer (Lewis) - good luck!
8th September 2023: The newly anointed Dr English spoke at the Sustainability in Chemistry Symposium at the University of Birmingham, and won the prize for Best Early Career Researcher Presentation. Not a bad week for Laura!
5th September 2023: Our postdoc Laura passed her delayed viva from her PhD with the Liptrot lab in the University of Bath, and is now officially Dr English - congratulations!
30th August 2023: The first research article from the group has appeared as a pre-print on ChemRxiv while it awaits peer review. Our study used supramolecular techniques to quantify the association constant of the active encounter complex of a frustrated Lewis pair, and is supported by extensive computational investigations. We also show that a higher concentration of active encounter complex leads to a faster rate of hydrogen activation, which is the crucial step that underpins FLP hydrogenation catalysis. A huge congratulations to first author Alastair and to our collaborators Dr Linjiang Chen (computational) and Dr Tim Barendt (supramolecular) for all their work and support.
18th August 2023: The group had a fantastic time at the RSC Dalton Young Members Event (DYME) hosted at the University of Birmingham. Most of the group gave posters during the conference, and Ethan gave a talk on his research on cycloaddition chemistry that was rewarded with a runners-up prize, congratulations!
1st June 2023: We are delighted to annouce the arrival of Laura English, our first postdoc in the group! Laura has joined us after completing her PhD with Dr David Liptrot at the University of Bath, and will be working on phosphorus chemistry and functionalised photoswitches.
25th May 2023: We went to the Keele Inorganic Symposium in honour of Prof Doug Stephan winning the 2021 RSC Centenary Prize. Andy talked about the group's recent work on azophosphines, and all the PhD students gave excellent posters on their research. Congratulations to Emma for scooping up the best poster prize!
18th - 20th April 2023: The group had a great time at the Dalton Meeting in Warwick. Andy gave a talk and Emma, Ethan, Alastair, and Kimberley all did a sterling job presenting posters. Particular congratulations to Kimberley who won one of the Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson Poster Prizes!
17th April 2023: It was a pleasure to host Prof Saurabh Chitnis and Prof Jonathan Sessler as part of our When The Stars Align Symposium at the University of Birmingham. Fantastic chemistry and a really fun event afterwards for all the students to meet the speakers.
4th April 2023: Andy has joined the RSC Main Group Chemistry Group Committee, so if you have any suggestions or feedback for main-group chemistry events in the UK then get in touch.
28th March 2023: What a busy week! The group split forces so that we could be represented at different conferences. Emma, Ethan and Andy attended the 19th European Workshop on Phosphorus Chemistry in San Sebastian, Spain, and Emma gave a great talk on her work on azophosphines, while Ethan presented a poster. Meanwhile, Alastair attended the Sustainable Nitrogen Activation Faraday Discussion in London to learn more about this fascinating topic. And Kimberley presented a poster at the John Fossey Memorial Symposium here in Birmingham, in honour of our friend and colleague who passed away last year.
3rd January 2023: Andy is back from his parental leave, and would like to thank the group for working so well during his time at home.
7th December 2022: We had a delicious joint Christmas dinner with our friends in the Barendt group, complete with ridiculous hats. Merry Christmas!
1st December 2022: The Jupp and Barendt groups reignited their bowling feud, and we are delighted to announce that the Jupp group romped home with victory and retained the trophy.
26th September 2022: A huge welcome to the new group members! Kimberley and Alastair start their PhDs in the group, while Lauren and Ellen are carrying out MSci projects with us. We look forward to seeing their exciting contributions in the coming months and years.
9th September 2022: Andy gave an invited talk at the University of Edinburgh - thank you to Mike Ingleson and Mike Cowley for being such great hosts. Andy then travelled to Durham for MICRA (Meeting for Inorganic Chemists Recently Appointed) 2022, and really enjoyed meeting other early-career researchs and discussing cool science.
7th September 2022: Emma attended the RSC Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson Dalton Poster Symposium at Burlington House in London and had a great time sharing her results with the inorganic community.
20th August 2022: Andy attended the Fall ACS Meeting in Chicago, centred around the idea of Sustainability in a Changing World. Andy was invited to talk at a symposium in honour of Prof Doug Stephan winning the F. Albert Cotton Award in Synthetic Organic Chemistry. It was a great occasion, and there was even time to check out a baseball game at the iconic Wrigley Field.
15th June 2022: A Dragon Comes to Birmingham! An outreach event at the University involving 130 schoolchildren from nearby primary schools. Emma spent the morning making bath bombs with the children, and Andy was the Debbie McGee of the event by acting as Dr Zoe Schnepp's assistant for all her experiments and demonstrations. It was a fantastic day for the children and staff, and hopefully the dragon will visit us again one day.
19th May 2022: Congratulations to Ethan for giving his first talk at the Research School Liaison Committee seminar series - and even more so for winning a prize for best talk!
6th April 2022: Frustrated Lewis pairs comprising phosphines and boranes activate small molecules like H₂ via a three-component reaction. The encounter complex is a weakly held together adduct of the phosphine and borane that can be used to explain this termolecular reactivity. Our Frontier article that explores the computational and experimental evidence for this elusive encounter complex has just been publish in Dalton Transactions.
1st April 2022: Today was the last day of the MSci students working in the laboratory. I'd like to thank them for all their hard work over the year, and I hope they had a good time with us!
25th March 2022: Andy, Alastair and Mark had a fun evening at the University of Birmingham ChemBall at Edgbaston Cricket Ground. This was the first time the event has managed to go ahead in three years, and a good time was had by all.
8th March 2022: Emma attended and presented a poster at her first in-person conference since starting her PhD at the Celebrating Women In Chemistry Conference in Nottingham. Great work Emma!
20th December 2021: Another excellent collaboration with Tongtong, Maotong and Doug has led to our project on the FLP reduction of benzyl halides being published in Chemical Communications. Thank you to Shi-Ming Chen for wrapping up the final experiments, and to Zheng-Wang Qu and Stefan Grimme for their great computational insight on the reactions.
15th December 2021: We had a delicious group Christmas dinner with the Barendt group. Thanks to everyone for their hard work over the year, and have a great festive break, and let's hope for a less crazy 2022.
30th November 2021: We had a great time at the first Jupp/Barendt inter-group bowling competition - and we are delighted to say that we won! Congratulations to Ethan, Sam, Mark, and Andy - unfortunately Emma couldn't make it and Alastair had defected to the Barendt group (we are still not on speaking terms). We look forward to defending our title in the future.
26th November 2021: Congratulations to Flip for passing his PhD defence at the University of Amsterdam and becoming Dr. Holtrop! While there, Andy also gave his first in-person talk for over 18 months; it was so nice to discuss science in real life again.
4th October 2021: We have demonstrated the reduction of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide using a metal-free frustrated Lewis pair approach, and this work has just been published in Angewandte Chemie. The selectivity of the reaction could be tuned by varying the Lewis base, the solvent, and the silyl halide reagent to favour the formation of methoxysilane, disilylacetal, methane or methyliodide. This work was initiated by Andy in Toronto several years ago, but the success of the project since that time is due to the hard work of Tongtong Wang and Maotong Xu, as well as our computational collaborators. Great work all!
30th September 2021: Some of Andy's work from his time in Toronto has been published in Chemistry, An Asian Journal. The project explored the reactivity of benzyl potassium species with carbon monoxide to afford carbene-like intermediates, that can react further to form a range of alkenes, and 5- and 7-membered rings.
27th September 2021: Welcome to Sam, Mark and Alastair, who have joined the group as MSci students this year. And welcome back to Ethan, who is starting his PhD in the group following his MSci project with us last year.
8th September 2021: The group's new glovebox is now up and running! The air-sensitive chemistry can now properly begin.
18th August 2021: Andy's role as a judge on the "adult panel" of the Royal Society's Young People’s Book Prize 2021 has been revealed. The panel was chaired by volcanologist Prof Katharine Cashman FRS MAE, and also comprised broadcaster Gabby Logan MBE, author Sharna Jacksonand primary school teacher Robin James. The panel whittled down over 50 excellent science books aimed at children, and selected a shortlist of six.
Update: The shortlist has now been revealed. Now these six books will be sent to over 500 schools across the UK, and the winner will be chosen by the children themselves. Good luck to them all!
9th August 2021: Congratulations to Ethan, who was awarded the Jeremy Fullbrook Prize for his excellent performance in organic chemistry! Ethan will continue his adventures with the group as a PhD student in September.
16th July 2021: Congratulations to Alice and Ethan as the first MSci students to graduate from the group - they should both be very proud of their acievements after such a tumultuous year.
29th June - 1st July 2021: Emma and Andy attended the virtual Dalton Joint Interest Group Meeting, and Andy gave a talk on the formation of radicals in frustrated Lewis pair systems. The online meeting was a huge success, although we can't wait for the return of the in-person conference in future years!
28th April 2021: A project that Andy started back in his PhD with Prof Jose Goicoechea on chelating phosphinecarboxamides (phosphorus-containing analogues of urea) has been masterfully continued and improved on by Érica Faria, and has been published in Dalton Transactions today.
7th April 2021: The extended Easter break has given Andy time to add a Crosswords section to the group website; if you fancy a chemistry-themed distraction over your coffee then check it out. More will hopefully added over time.
8th March 2021: Alice and Ethan are in the lab! After a highly disrupted year, they are both able to get stuck in with the practical part of their Masters projects - good luck!
18th January 2021: Andy discussed the role of light in promoting single-electron transfer in frustrated Lewis pair systems at the Global Inorganic Discussion Weekdays seminar series.
1st December 2020: The book Frustrated Lewis Pairs, part of the Molecular Catalysis series and edited by Chris Slootweg and Andy, is out! A huge thank you to all the authors for contributing fantastic chapters that cover the whole range of structures, reactivity and applications of FLPs. Flip (Holtrop), Andy and Chris wrote a chapter on Radicals in Frustrated Lewis Pair Chemistry, which summarises the recent progress and understanding in single-electron transfer within FLP systems for radical reactivity; and Andy wrote a chapter entitled Heterogeneous Catalysis by Frustrated Lewis Pairs, covering the developments of solid-state FLP catalysts.
27th November 2020: Andy has been elected as a Topic Editor for Processes, an open-access journal on processes in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, materials, and related process/systems engineering research fields.
26th November 2020: The Jupp and Pike groups have held their inaugural joint group meeting! Thank you to all for the presentations and scientific discussion, and hopeully we can have one in person at some point in the future.
19th November 2020: Phosphorus Recovery and Recycling – Closing the Loop is published in Chemical Society Reviews. This open-access tutorial review describes the dovetailing environmental problems of too much phosphorus (in waterways) and too little phosphorus (to mine from the ground), and explores a range of phosphorus recycling technologies to solve these issues.
31st October 2020: Ethan Calder and Alice Harmer have joined the group as fourth-year MSci students, and their projects in the lab will commence in February. Welcome to the group!
28th September 2020: The group has doubled in size! Emma Jordan has joined as the group's first PhD student - welcome!
11th September 2020: The book chapter Steric attraction: A force to be reckoned with is in press. The chapter, as part of the most recent Advances in Physical Organic Chemistry, describes the use of London dispersion interactions to manipulate molecular structures and chemical transformations.
10th September 2020: The group website is (finally) online!
26th August 2020: Andy has been awarded a prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry, although admittedly not one of their most prestigious ones... keen readers of Chemistry World will spot that he has been awarded a £25 book voucher for solving the August Wordoku puzzle. One for the CV.
25th August 2020: Single‐electron Transfer in Frustrated Lewis Pair Chemistry is published in Angewandte Chemie! This research was carried out with the Slootweg and de Bruin Groups at the Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences at the University of Amsterdam, where we explored the nature of single-electron transfer between Lewis acid and base systems, and whether or not the radical ion pairs are significantly involved in small-molecule activation.
12th August 2020: Andy has been awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to explore the sustainable synthesis of nitrogen-containing compounds via the direct activation of N2. This news featured on the UoB Chemistry website, and featured a very literal image caption...
1st July 2020: Andy has started his independent career as a Birmingham Fellow at the University of Birmingham.