Welcome to our new researchers

We welcome Fiona Clarke, Alex Horan, Saranna Kavanagh and Tricia Madden to the group! All four will be undertaking their final year research projects in the group this year as part of their BSc degrees in ‘Chemistry’ or ‘Medicinal Chemistry & Chemical Biology’. We hope they enjoy their time in the group and that they learn lots. We are sure they will make valuable contributions to the group’s research efforts during their projects. Their projects will help us to investigate reaction mechanisms, study catalysis, improve synthetic methodology, and make compounds with medicinal applications.

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Congratulations Graduates!

Congratulations to our former project students David, Orla and Mark on their BSc graduation last Friday. Their hard work on their projects was a significant part of their final year, and the effort has now come to fruition. Orla and Mark are pursuing PhDs in the Gilheany and Oscarson labs, respectively, here in UCD, so we will see plenty of them over the next few years. While David is pursuing an MEngSc in Biopharmaceutical Engineering. We wish each of them the best for their future as graduates. Congratulations also to Orla in winning an IRC scholarship for her PhD.

Congratulations also to Vincent who also graduated on Friday with his BSc. He now joins the group as a PhD student (see welcome post below).

 

3DNet Annual Meeting, BioCity

Yesterday Eoghan, Avene and Gary attended the 3rd Annual 3DNet Meeting, which was held in BioCity, Nottingham. This year’s meeting was hosted by RenaSci, one of the industrial partners in the 3DNet project. The project is a cross-European project in the area of developing effective treatments for diseases of the eye, funded by a FP7-Marie Curie IAPP grant, led by Breandán Kennedy in UCD. As well as having face-to-face discussions with our collaborators the meeting had interesting talks from outside experts on the biology and medicinal chemistry relevant to medicines for eye diseases.

We welcome Vincent

We welcome Vincent Duong to the group. Vincent did his BSc in UCD and will be carrying out research into new methods for the synthesis of heterocycles. His project will build on our previous work using vinylsulfonium salts and will develop better ways to make heterocycles that have the potential to be used in new medicines by pharmaceutical companies. His project will be carried out in collaboration with Prof Varinder Aggarwal FRS in the University of Bristol, and will include research visits to Bristol.