The 3rd Postdoctoral Symposium of the RSC’s Heterocyclic and Synthesis Group (HSG) will be held online at 11:00-16:00 (British Summer Time) on Monday 18th May 2026.

The event will feature seven lectures from postdoctoral researchers, as well as a plenary lecture from Dr Beatrice Collins, University of Bristol (www.collinsresearch.org).

We invite all organic chemistry postdocs interested in giving a talk to submit an abstract at https://www.rsc.org/events/find-an-event/3rd-postdoctoral-symposium-(virtual)-heterocyclic-and-synthesis-group by May 4th.

To support promising early career researchers, two prizes will be awarded for best talks, with the HSG covering registration and reasonable travel costs for the prize-winners to attend the 2026 Gregynog Synthesis Workshop.

Attendance is free and open to all, but registration via the GoToWebinar event page is essential.

A big thank you to the organising team of this year’s University of Nottingham Women in STEM Conference on International Women’s Day (including our very own Ishbel Cooke)! The team put together an excellent event that struck the perfect balance of discussing the challenges women still face in STEM careers today, while also celebrating our successes and the science we all do and love.

Are you interested in exploring the synthesis and stability of new hypervalent iodine reagents for organic synthesis? If so, join our group for a one-year MRes position starting in October 2026! Informal applications (CV and short cover letter/email) are accepted until Friday 20th Feb. Interviews will be organised in the week commencing 2nd March.

More information on the University of Nottingham chemistry MRes programme (including eligibility and fees) can be found here: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/pgstudy/course/research/chemistry-mres

The University of Nottingham (ranked among the Top 20 universities in the UK and in the world’s Top 100 according to the QS World University Rankings 2026) is offering fully funded PhD scholarship to Chinese nationals through the China Scholarship Council Research Excellence Scholarships (click here for more information). If you are eligible for this scholarship and interested in a hypervalent iodine PhD in the O’Duill group, please contact miriam.oduill(at)nottingham.ac.uk by January 13th.

Looking for a PhD position? Look no further! We are recruiting motivated PhD candidates through the Nottingham EPSRC CDT in Resilient Chemistry. Click on the link to find out more about the ReaCT research theme (Resilient Catalytic Strategies for Transformative Technologies), or get in touch at miriam.oduill(at)nottingham.ac.uk.

Application deadline: 21 November 2025. (Interviews: early December 2025)

I deeply regret that due to current funding limitations, we are only able to accept applications from Home students at this time in accordance with current UKRI guidance.

Ishbel presented her fluorine-18 labelled amino acids (work done in collaboration with Helen Betts, NUH) at the UK PET Chemistry Meeting in Glasgow earlier this month.

And Charlotte showed med chemists at the EFMC Symposium in Porto how useful hypervalent iodine can be.

Last week, we said farewell to Suman, who is embarking on a Marie Curie Fellowship with Prof. Manuel Orlandi at the University of Padova. Suman achieved the first breakthrough in hypervalent iodine chemistry in our group with the difluoroethylation of heteroatom nucleophiles, resulting in a 1st author paper in Angewandte Chemie. More recently, he laid the groundwork for an exciting follow-up project (watch this space!) Suman will be missed in the lab, and we wish him all the best in Italy!

Kudos to the group for designing a snow globe for him featuring the Carbon Neutral Laboratory, to remember his time in Nottingham by.

Congratulations Dr Greener!
Andrew successfully passed his viva yesterday, becoming the first member of the O’Duill group to graduate with a PhD from the University of Nottingham. Andrew gained fundamental insights into the structure and stability of hypervalent iodine compounds during his PhD, which allowed him to develop new alkylation reagents. He single-handedly set up our lab in the middle of a pandemic and laid the groundwork for many of the projects currently ongoing in the group. Thank you for your hard work Andrew!

Miriam has just returned form an excellent trip to China, where she attended the 8th International Conference on Hypervalent Iodine Chemistry in Tianjin and completed a seminar tour at ICCAS, Tsinghua University and Peking University in Beijing. It was a pleasure to meet up with old friends and make new ones over great food and exciting chemistry.

Suman had a great experience at the 25th Tetrahedron Symposium in Bruges, where he presented his work and made new connections.

Charlotte will soon be heading to the EFMC International Symposium on Advances in Synthetic and Medicinal Chemistry in Porto to present her work. Watch this space for photos coming soon.

The sun came out to celebrate the team’s recent successes. Congratulations to Suman on his prestigious Marie Curie fellowship, Andrew for submitting his PhD thesis, and Sim and Josh for finishing their MSci exams! It also gave us the opportunity to show Aaron, who is currently visiting from Newcastle University, the Robin Hood statue and Nottingham pubs.