All Department of Chemistry courses

Have you thought about using AI in your research but aren’t sure how to get started? Or are you already using AI and have run into challenges with implementation? Come and meet the Accelerate team to find the support you need.

The Accelerate Programme, based in the Department of Computer Science and Technology, are holding an in-person AI Clinic Session on Wednesday 13th March from 11am – 1pm in the Todd-Hamied room of the Chemistry Department. The clinic is open to support all staff and students with AI research. No matter your level of experience with AI, we invite you to come and talk to our team. We support projects at all stages - from ideation, grant writing and data gathering, through to software issues and publication. The clinic is running as a drop-in session, but we also have a form if you'd like to share details of your issue in advance. We look forward to meeting you there!

A Scientific Editor from the Royal Society of Chemistry’s flagship journal Chemical Science will be talking about careers in scientific publishing, specifically focused on journals publishing, including her own career journey, what is involved in her role and an overview of the RSC and Chemical Science. The session will include an opportunity for questions about anything relating to scientific publishing in general, or specifically relating to the topic of the talk.

We find ourselves at a pivotal point in history for the long-term sustainability of our society and biome. It would be so easy to have a negative view about the future i.e. climate change is slowly baking us all to death. Last year alone was pretty intense - 1/3 of pakistan was flooded last year and arctic storms ravaged the US. Our climate is becoming more extreme and unpredictable. In 2 years time, we'll be closer to 2050 than the year 2000. We have no time to lose.

But this talk isn't about doomerism or trying to induce anxiety in you. It's about demonstrating how you, as a university graduate, highly trained in some technical field, can exert maximum leverage in the fight against climate change through the career choices that you make over the next 10, 20 or 30 years. In this talk, Dr Chadwick will highlight the exciting, state-of-the-art work ongoing around the planet in areas such as Green Hydrogen, The future of food, Carbon Dioxide Removal, Fusion, Fission, and Renewables - technologies all key to our sustainable future.

All with the goal of simply providing you with some inspiration and helping you to imagine how your skill sets might one day lend themselves to our collective goal of a sustainable world.

Climate change is daunting - but it also represents a massive opportunity to make the world better.

Dr Nicholas Chadwick received his MChem in organometallic chemistry from the University of Nottingham in 2012 before successfully studying for a PhD in materials science at University College London in 2015. After graduating he worked on the development of a range of early stage hardware technologies such as advanced transistor technologies, low-cost pollutant sensors for under-represented groups across Southern Asia and Mexico, and carbon capture technologies. He became convinced that direct air carbon capture (DAC) was the one thing we needed at scale to reach our net zero targets of 2050 and didn't have. After going on a bit of a journey scoping out opportunities he decided to co-found Mission Zero Technologies to commercialize and scale Direct Air Capture.

The session will cover the use of electronic laboratory notebook which is a computer programme designed to replace laboratory notebooks. ELN will help the users to document research, experiments and procedures performed in a laboratory.

Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7507381413 Meeting ID: 750 738 1413

PhD students have plenty of options once you graduate. In this interactive session we will look at the pros and cons of different career options. You will have a chance to think about what you want your work to do for you and what you can offer employers, and you will learn ways to find out more about jobs in which you are interested. It is recommended that you attend both sessions.

• Session 1 - What jobs are out there and deciding what is ‘right’ for me?

Chemistry PhD students have many options after graduation. In this 1-hour session we will explore the pros and cons of different career choices. We will also consider how to assess which options would work for you.

• Session 2 - Career options for PhDs in chemistry

In this second 1-hour session we will focus on generating specific job ideas, how you might structure your careers ‘research’, key questions to ask and timelines for starting your ‘search’ for your next step after Cambridge.

This session is compulsory for all experimentalists to attend and will provide useful information regarding analytical facilities at this Department including NMR, Mass Spectrometry, X-ray Crystallography, Microanalysis and Electron Microscopy. Short descriptions will be given of all available instruments, as well as explain the procedures for preparing/submitting samples for the analysis will also be discussed.

This training will consist of two sessions, introducing you to use of both Water's MS software and MassLynx and Bruker and Thermo's MS software: MALDI and Orbitrap.

Once you book on the course you will receive a link to preregister on Zoom.

This course will provide an idea of what kind of scientific problems can be solved by solid state NMR. It will cover how NMR can be used to study molecular structure, nanostructure and dynamics in the solid state, including heterogeneous solids, such as polymers, MOFs, energy-storage and biological materials This course will build on a basic working knowledge of solution-state NMR for 1H and 13C, i.e. undergraduate level NMR. In order to highlight the utility of this technique, some materials based research using solid state NMR will also be covered.

This session will be delivered via Zoom.

These lectures will introduce the basics of crystallography and diffraction, assuming no prior knowledge. The aim is to provide an overview that will inspire and serve as a basis for researchers to use the Department’s single-crystal and/or powder X-ray diffraction facilities or to appreciate more effectively results obtained through the Department’s crystallographic services. The final lecture will be devoted to searching and visualising crystallographic data using the Cambridge Structural Database system.

Three workshops on aspects of writing for which the students would be expected to submit two pieces of written work that would be assessed by the instructor. The aim of the workshops will be for the students to improve both their scientific writing skills as well as their general academic literacy skills.

The specific areas of writing to be covered are:

• Literature Review
• Results section

Session One

Introduction to Academic Writing at PG Level

The aim of this session would be to prepare the foundations, as it were, covering the expectations of writing at PG level and covering some strategies for achieving what is the University’s only criterion when it comes to writing, namely that it is ‘clearly written’, before looking at writing in Chemistry specifically, and closing by looking at the two areas which will be the focus of the next two sessions – Literature Reviews and Results Sections.

Why writing at PG level is so hard

• Understanding the Writing Process
• How English works: Achieving Clarity
• Rhetorical Templates
• Paragraphs
• Editing: from the Macro to the Micro
• Discipline-specific Considerations
• Literature Review & Results Section

Sessions Two & Three

• Literature Reviews
• Results Sections

For both of these sessions the students who be expected to have submitted work a week beforehand – this could be either individually or as a group. Each piece of work should be ca. 5 pages in length.

The two areas, Literature Reviews and Results Sections, will have been introduced in the introductory section. Students will also be able to access additional support materials when preparing their written work for submission before the workshop.

Each workshop would then essentially be based on the submissions of the group – looking and the strengths and weaknesses of a selection of them, encouraging discussion amongst the group as to what would need to be done in order to strengthen the submissions. This would also include a range of hands-on exercises that the students would do during the workshop, either individually or in a small group.

An opportunity ask questions to the course trainer re Fortran 90/95.

• Please email training@ch.cam.ac.uk to book one 15 minute slot. You will be asked to confirm your attendance one day before.

This series of lectures will support you to improve the standard of your scientific writing. It will be delivered in two parts covering all you need to know about research journals including:

• Session 1: 'How to read a paper'
• Session 2: 'How to write scientific papers and your thesis'

This hands-on course teaches the basics of Latex including syntax, lists, maths equations, basic chemical equations, tables, graphical figures and internal and external referencing. We also learn how to link documents to help manage large projects. The course manual is presented in the style of a thesis and since you also receive the source code you also receive a template for a thesis.

Once booked you will receive a link to both sessions via Zoom.

This hands-on course teaches the basics of Latex including syntax, lists, maths equations, basic chemical equations, tables, graphical figures and internal and external referencing. We also learn how to link documents to help manage large projects. The course manual is presented in the style of a thesis and since you also receive the source code you also receive a template for a thesis.

Once booked you will receive a link to Zoom.

Engaging communications is important for any audience and vital for communicating research with a public audience. This 2 hour webinar will take you through the art and science for crafting engaging communications including:

• the fundamental principles for all good communication
• two simple ways to enhance your personal impact
• tools for collating and structuring engaging and accessible content
• psychological points of power when presenting with powerpoint

The first half of this session will cover an overview of Raytracing versus 3D Modelling, an introduction to the free Raytracing programme Povray, running Povray (command line options). Making and manipulating simple shapes, camera tricks (depth of field, angle of view) and using other software to generate Povray input (e.g. Jmol)

The second half of the session is an introduction to 3D modelling and animation using the open source programme Blender. This will cover the installation and customisation of the Blender interface for use with chemical models, how to import chemical structures from Jmol and the protein data base (PDB), the basics of 3D modelling, and an introduction to Key-frame animation.

No previous experience with either 3D modelling or animation is required.

You will receive a Zoom link when you register for this course

The first half of this session will cover an overview of Raytracing versus 3D Modelling, an introduction to the free Raytracing programme Povray, running Povray (command line options). Making and manipulating simple shapes, camera tricks (depth of field, angle of view) and using other software to generate Povray input (e.g. Jmol)

The second half of the session is an introduction to 3D modelling and animation using the open source programme Blender. This will cover the installation and customisation of the Blender interface for use with chemical models, how to import chemical structures from Jmol and the protein data base (PDB), the basics of 3D modelling, and an introduction to Key-frame animation.

No previous experience with either 3D modelling or animation is required.

You will receive a Zoom link when you register for this course

Submission of the first year report can seem to be a daunting experience, from constructing it to submitting and then being assessed by academic staff. In this session, a member of the Degree Committee Office, School of Physical Sciences, a member of the PG Education team and an academic will talk through all aspects of procedure and answer any questions students wish to pose. Students who went through their first year exam, as well as members of academic staff who carry out first year vivas will also be there to talk about the reality of the process from all perspectives.

Submission of the PhD thesis can seem to be a daunting experience, from constructing it to submitting and then being examined, with one of those examiners coming from an external institution. In this session, a member of the Degree Committee Office, School of Physical Sciences, a member of the PG Education team and an academic will talk through all aspects of procedure regarding thesis submission and answer any questions students wish to pose. Students who were recently examined, as well as members of academic staff who carry out PhD vivas will also be there to talk about the reality of the process from all perspectives

Submission of an MPhil thesis can seem to be a daunting experience, from constructing it to submitting and then being examined, with one of those examiners coming from an external institution. In this session, a member of the Degree Committee Office, School of Physical Sciences, a member of the PG Education team and an academic will talk through all aspects of procedure regarding thesis submission and answer any questions students wish to pose. Students who were recently examined, as well as members of academic staff who carry out MPhil vivas will also be there to talk about the reality of the process from all perspectives.

FS1 - Successful Completion of a Research Degree An hour devoted to a discussion of how to plan your time effectively on a day to day basis, how to produce a dissertation/thesis (from first year report to MPhil to PhD) and the essential requirements of an experimental section.

FS2 - Dignity@Study The University of Cambridge is committed to protecting the dignity of staff, students, visitors to the University, and all members of the University community in their work and their interactions with others. The University expects all members of the University community to treat each other with respect, courtesy and consideration at all times. All members of the University community have the right to expect professional behaviour from others, and a corresponding responsibility to behave professionally towards others. Nick will explore what this means for graduate students in this Department with an opportunity to ask questions more informally.

This is a compulsory session for 1st year postgraduates.

You will be introduced to Fortran 90/95 and provided with materials which cover the basics of Fortran 90/95 with an emphasis on applications in the physical sciences. The key concepts of loops, functions, subroutines, modules, and other standard Fortran syntax will be introduced sequentially.

• This course will be made available on Moodle from 2 to 30 November

You will be introduced to Fortran 90/95 and provided with materials which cover the basics of Fortran 90/95 with an emphasis on applications in the physical sciences. The key concepts of loops, functions, subroutines, modules, and other standard Fortran syntax will be introduced sequentially.

A thorough awareness of issues relating to research ethics and research integrity are essential to producing excellent research. This session will provide an introduction to the ethical responsibilities of researchers at the University, publication ethics and research integrity.

This training is available via Moodle.

Unconscious Bias refers to the biases we hold that are not in our conscious control. Research shows that these biases can adversely affect key decisions in the workplace. The session will enable you to work towards reducing the effects of unconscious bias for yourself and within your organisation. Using examples that you will be able to relate to, we help you to explore the link between implicit bias and the impact on the organisation. The overall aim of the session is to provide participants with an understanding of the nature of Unconscious Bias and how it impacts on individual and group attitudes, behaviours and decision-making processes.

Unconscious Bias refers to the biases we hold that are not in our conscious control. Research shows that these biases can adversely affect key decisions in the workplace. The session will enable you to work towards reducing the effects of unconscious bias for yourself and within your organisation. Using examples that you will be able to relate to, we help you to explore the link between implicit bias and the impact on the organisation. The overall aim of the session is to provide participants with an understanding of the nature of Unconscious Bias and how it impacts on individual and group attitudes, behaviours and decision-making processes.

How are you approaching getting published? Are you (passively) writing up your research, submitting your article and hoping for the best? Or are you (proactively) doing your best to get your work published into your intended journal and so contribute to your discipline and society? If it’s more the former than the latter, that’s OK: this introductory ‘Fundamentals of the Publication Process’ aims to help you to help yourself to be as successful as you can.

In the process of this practical and pragmatic half-day session outlining a series of proactive steps that you can take, this course will explore among other topics:

• how to select a target journal
• the peer review system in terms of submitting, revising and re-submitting
• how to communicate effectively with editors and reviewers
• explore what editors really look for

Have you ever struggled with styles of communication of others (peers, lecturers, supervisors, staff), wondered why some people seem to use more formal language, or be more direct than others? Culture plays a big part in how we communicate, and adjusting to the cultural communication norms means more than learning a foreign language.

In Cambridge's diverse and multicultural environment, we constantly communicate with people whose cultural communication norms differ from ours, whether you are a native English speaker from the United Kingdom, a native English speaker from elsewhere in the world, or have learnt English as a foreign language.

In order to avoid misunderstanding, or worse still, conflict, brought on by variations in communication styles we need to learn to make allowances for the cultural differences in how people communicate. To better understand cross-cultural complexity and increase your awareness of cultural identities, come to a session on intercultural communication to increase your cultural awareness and give you a better understanding of how culture may affect your everyday communication.

This compulsory session is intended to welcome new graduate students to the Department of Chemistry Library service in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The session will briefly cover how the physical library space can be used and, most importantly, give you practical information on how you can access the wide range of electronic resources available to you remotely. It will also cover the services available to you from other Cambridge libraries.

This session is intended to set you up so you can start to do your research as efficiently and effectively as possible.

• Once booked onto the course, you will receive a link to pre-register on Zoom.

This session introduces three citation databases: Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed (if relevant to the audience). These databases index all the scientific literature that is published. When used efficiently, and in combination, they are a powerful tool for finding the research publications you need - so you don't miss out on anything. They will be compared and contrasted with each other, and with using Google or Google Scholar, to find citations.

You will be guided on how to search these databases effectively; the session includes a hands-on element where you can practice. The session covers how to set up email alerts for searches and citations, so you can keep up with research published in your field. It also covers how to find metrics and altmetrics available for a journal, journal article, or author, so you can evaluate the quality of a piece of research, or a particular author's research before collaborating with them, for example. It will cover how to export the citations you find to your reference manager so you can easily create a bibliography and/or cite publications in your own work.

The session will be most suitable for those who are new to searching citation databases or would like a refresher.

Please register via Zoom

This session introduces three citation databases: Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed (if relevant to the audience). These databases index all the scientific literature that is published. When used efficiently, and in combination, they are a powerful tool for finding the research publications you need - so you don't miss out on anything. They will be compared and contrasted with each other, and with using Google or Google Scholar, to find citations.

You will be guided on how to search these databases effectively; the session includes a hands-on element where you can practice. The session covers how to set up email alerts for searches and citations, so you can keep up with research published in your field. It also covers how to find metrics and altmetrics available for a journal, journal article, or author, so you can evaluate the quality of a piece of research, or a particular author's research before collaborating with them, for example. It will cover how to export the citations you find to your reference manager so you can easily create a bibliography and/or cite publications in your own work.

The session will be most suitable for those who are new to searching citation databases or would like a refresher.

This compulsory online course will equip you with the skills required to manage the research information you will need to gather throughout your graduate course, as well as the publications you will produce yourself. It will also help you enhance your online research profile and measure the impact of research.

• This training will be made available on Moodle from 2nd November until 31st May 2021.

This compulsory online course will equip you with the skills required to manage the research information you will need to gather throughout your graduate course, as well as the publications you will produce yourself. It will also help you enhance your online research profile and measure the impact of research.

The course is self-taught through Moodle.

Enrol here.

These optional drop-in sessions provide an opportunity for new chemistry graduate students who have completed the compulsory online IS4 Research Data Management and IS3 Information Research Skills courses to ask the trainer any questions they have about the content, or about how they can apply what they have learnt, in more detail.

• Please email training@ch.cam to book a 15 minute slot and you will receive a Zoom link. You will be asked to confirm your attendance one day before it takes place. If you do not confirm, your place will be offered to someone else.

As our understanding of gender identity and sexuality continues to grow, it is up to us as professionals to keep up to date with new language and terminology, as well as maintaining our inclusivity practice in the workplace. This training will provide you with the tools and training needed to create a safe and inclusive professional environment for your staff and students

This session introduces new undergraduate Chemistry students to the Department of Chemistry Library and its place within the wider Cambridge University Library system. It provides general information on what is available, where it is, and how to get it. Print and online resources are included.

This course explores how to write a paper and improve your writing style in Chemistry papers. The course will be particularly useful for those working on their first year report, MPhil thesis or an article.

This event is in-person only.

Science is a strikingly successful and powerful feature of contemporary human cultures: it has transformed lives, enabled great technological feats and often revealed the world to be a much stranger place than appearances suggest. But what is science, really, and how and why has it been so successful?

Science is a strikingly successful and powerful feature of contemporary human cultures: it has transformed lives, enabled great technological feats and often revealed the world to be a much stranger place than appearances suggest. But what is science, really, and how and why has it been so successful?

An 8 week Improv Theatre Course Improv teaches excellent skills for scientists! It will boost your confidence, teach you to be spontaneous and overcome the fear of failure. It will work wonders for your public speaking, communication and presentation skills.

This course will cover the quantitative background to underpin many of the electrochemical methods exploited by the research groups in the Department. The first part ('Foundations') will cover the background physical chemistry relevant for electrochemical systems: Following a reminder of the basics of electrochemistry, we address the physical chemistry of metals, ionic solutions and the electrode/solution interface, including electrode dynamics, and connection to experimental measurements. The second part ('Applications') will cover specific examples of applications drawn from active research groups in the department.

This course is made up of 8 sessions which will be based around the topics below: unlike other courses in the Graduate Lecture Series, it is essential to attend all 8 sessions to benefit from this training. Places are limited so please be absolutely certain upon booking that you will commit to the entire course.

Once you book this course, you will need to register for each session via Zoom.

This is a practical skills-based course which comprises of 1 optional drop-in session and 6 compulsory instructor-lead statistics sessions. These will take place in Todd Hamied

The Departmental Advanced Safety Training covers basic induction training in how to work safely, including emergency arrangements for fire and evacuation, first aid and incidents including flood and gas leak. By attending, you are made aware of the Department’s Health and Safety Policy and your responsibilities under health and safety law. You will be introduced to the process required to prepare a risk assessment with standard operating procedure (SOP) or method statement, how to select the correct type of protective equipment (PPE) and why it needs to be worn, and reminded of the importance of good house keeping for reducing the likelihood of there being an incident. The hazards associated with display screen equipment (DSE) and manual handling are identified and the need to control them by a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risk is explained. Electrical safety and the requirement for annual Portable Appliance Testing (PAT) is made clear.

• Please note you will find this training on Moodle.

Part of Induction Week

Advanced induction training for experimentalists introduces some of the department’s special chemical hazards including explosives, hydrogen fluoride and cyanide, and restricted chemicals, and illustrates the consequences of incorrect waste disposal. Experimentalists are made aware of the biological hazards in the department and how these are controlled with a suitable risk assessment, safety cabinets and the need for the appropriate inactivation method to be applied. Attendees are alerted to the hazards and damage caused by non-ionising radiation, glassware and sharps, oil baths and lifting equipment. The induction concludes by directing the experimentalist to compulsory University-provided specialist training courses, the requirement for fire awareness training and sources of Health and Safety information.

• This training is will be available on Moodle.

This course will cover safe storage and use of cryogens, safe use and stores of compressed gas, and aspects of oxygen depletion with respect to the above.

• This training will be available on Moodle.

This course will focus on recent progress in the application of kernel-based methods, Random Forests and Deep Neural Networks to modelling in chemistry. The material will build on the content of the core Informatics course and introduce new descriptors, advanced modelling techniques and example applications drawn from the current literature. Lectures will be interactive, with students working through computational exercises during class sessions.

An applied introduction to probabilistic modelling, machine learning and artificial intelligence-based approaches for students with little or no background in theory and modelling. The course will be taught through a series of case studies from the current literature in which modelling approaches have been applied to large datasets from chemistry and biochemistry. Data and code will be made available to students and discussed in class. Students will become familiar with python based tools that implement the models though practical sessions and group based assignments.

This course will introduce students to the central question of how to encode molecules and molecular properties in a computational model. Building on the compulsory informatics course (see previous table entry), it will focus on reactivity parameterisation and prediction. The basics of DFT calculations will be introduced, together with how DFT can be used to model reactions (including flaws, assumptions, drawbacks etc). Lecture based format will be complemented by practical sessions in setting up different DFT-based calculations.