On 5 June, 70 undergraduate students from chemistry departments in London and further afield attended a half day Undergraduate Research Conference at London Metropolitan University (LMU) that featured talks and poster presentations by final year students on their respective projects.
Julia Fairbairn (third from left)
The event, which was sponsored by the Royal Society of Chemistry, contained a variety of oral presentations, from quenching excited states to the synthesis of natural products and electrically charging bricks, followed by posters on carbon nanotubes and copper anticancer drugs.
Queen Mary was represented by final year Micaela Mapaye (MSci Chemistry) and Sebastiano Ortalli (BSc Pharmaceutical Chemistry), who gave 15 minute presentations and Julia Fairburn (MSci Chemisry) and Zamaan Mukadam (MSci Pharmaceutical Chemistry), who presented posters. There were also presentations and talks by final year students from King’s College, University of Greenwich, University of Hertfordshire, the Open University and the LMU.
Julia Fairbairn was awarded first prize for her poster on 'the synthesis of a library of small organic molecules as novel agonists for FPR2 for the treatment of inflammation' (supervised by Dr Chris Bray). On winning the poster competition, Julia said, “I'm really pleased. It was a really good day, and it was interesting to see all of the different undergraduate research that has been done in chemistry throughout the year at different universities. It was also good to meet the other students and discuss what being a chemistry undergraduate student is like from different perspectives”.
Conference organiser Dr Daniel Sykes from LMU described the event as a success and hopes that the event will become an annual meeting of final year undergraduate chemists in London, at which they can present their research and also network.