Projects

Jon Steed is the recipient of the 2006 Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Doctoral Supervision

Positions Available

Possible research projects for the current year as an M.Chem., Ph.D. or Summer Student. Please come to Room 103L, phone +44 (0)191 334 2085 or email Professor Steed to discuss your interests

Ph.D. Projects

If you are interested in studying for a Ph.D. please contact Professor Steed as early as possible so that, where possible, funding can be arranged. The Chemistry Department has a major open day in November each year where you can come along and talk to potential supervisors. Alternatively an individual interview date can be arranged and we will usually cover your travel costs. Other possible means of funding your studies are given on our funding page.

4th Year M.Chem. Advanced Research Projects

We are very proud of our M.Chem. students at Durham. The M.Chem. project is a superb introduction to chemical research. The vast majority of the M.Chem. students joining the group have either published high quality papers in the scientific literature from their M.Chem. project work or their work is in the process of being written up. Our group places a strong emphasis on publication and having a CV with this kind of concrete evidence of scientific achievement is invaluable in students’ careers. Have a look at our past projects page for what students have achieved in previous years

For the coming year:

Project choices are always flexible. As a guide for the next academic year we anticipate running three projects for which experienced postdoctoral researchers are available in the lab to offer first hand help and guidance. These projects will be in the materials, inorganic or organic sub-areas with focus on molecular crystals, particularly pharmaceuticals, molecular sensing and gel phase materials (we are a very multidisciplinary group).

More generally…

Research topics in a wide variety of supramolecular chemistry, pharmaceutics and nanochemistry are available – please drop by and discuss your interests. In particular we have had a great deal of recent success with the design of gel phase materials and in the understanding and control of the pharmaceutical solid state. There is an enormous amount of expertise available to train up and coming new researchers and students have the opportunity of characterising their compounds by a wide variety of techniques including X-ray crystallography.

Summer Projects

There are various opportunities for summer bursaries or voulantary vacation laboratory work for students usually in their penultimate undergraduate year to undertake 6-10 weeks research in an academic lab. Professor Steed is happy to discuss ideas and options.