News

The group (+Amy Wiseman from the Chivers group) went to Thai River for an early Christmas lunch. We are excited for more science in 2023!

We are looking to recruit up to three (yes, three!) PhD students in 2023. Funding is available for UK candidates, EU candidates, and international candidates. Please see the PDF below for details.

We are delighted that Beth Kinninment-Williams has joined us as a Level 4 MSci (Chemistry-Biology) research student in our lab. Beth is co-supervised by Prof. Steven Cobb at the Department of Chemistry. Beth will be examining the antibacterial activity of Cu-binding peptides from human saliva. Welcome!

Sam, Jack, and Karrera attended the International Copper Meeting in Sorrento. It was a fantastic conference, full of copper science. We are so happy to have caught up with old friends after a long pandemic, and to have made new friends. Here are photos of Sam and Jack with their posters.

We are very proud to announce that Atreyee passed her viva voce examination with minor corrections. Atreyee’s thesis was entitled “Bioactivity of Substituted Copper Pyrithione Complexes”. Atreyee will now return to her beloved home country, India, to seek an industrial position there. We wish her all the very best! Below is a picture of the celebrations with both supervisors.

We are delighted to welcome John Richards as a Master’s of Science by Research student in the lab. John completed his Bachelor in Natural Sciences (Chemistry-Biology) at Durham University. He is interested in the bioinorganic chemistry of cuproproteins. Welcome!

Karrera’s editorial for the Microbiology Society’s Metals in Microbiology article collection is now on-line! This editorial, co-authored by Dr Jen Cavet (University of Manchester), is part of the Society’s 75th Anniversary, and it highlights recent metallo-articles published by the Society’s flagship journal, Microbiology.

Congratulations to PhD student Sam Firth for being awarded travel grants from Durham University Biophysical Sciences Institute and from the Microbiology Society to attend the 2022 International Copper Meeting in Sorrento, Italy!

Many congratulations to Jin Hong (MScR) and Lotte O’Hern (MSci) on their university graduations! Lotte was also awarded the Natural Sciences MSci Outstanding Achievement Award for graduating top of her cohort.

Last Thursday, Karrera presented the group’s work on salivary metal-binding peptides at FASEB Conference for Trace Elements in Biology and Medicine in Asheville, NC, USA. We are very grateful for financial support from the Department of Biosciences, which made the trip possible. Now it’s time recover from travel exhaustion and jetlag…