Matthew Wallace, a student from the Department of Chemistry has been shortlisted in the 2013 SET Awards for the second year running.
The Science, Engineering & Technology (SET) Student of the Year Awards are Europe’s most important awards for science and technology undergraduates. Supported by industry, and leading scientific and technical institutions, the SET awards showcase educational excellence by publicly recognising the exceptional achievements of both students and universities.
Outstanding academic achievements
Matthew was nominated for his outstanding academic achievements, including his project entitled ‘NMR Spectroscopy for Analysis of Supramolecular Hydrogels’, which was carried out with Dr Jon Iggo and Dr Dave Adams from the Department.
The gels are more bio-compatible and respond more rapidly to chemical and physical stimuli, compared with conventional gels formed from polymer chains and thus have advantages in biomedical applications. Tailoring gels for these applications requires knowledge of, for example, the size of the pores in the network as this determines key properties such as the release rate of entrapped drugs.
Project
Matthew’s project developed non-invasive, NMR methods to estimate the pore size in supramolecular hydrogels, the relative alignment of the gel fibres and the effect of the gel preparation conditions on the final gel structure. His work has been published in Soft Matter, with Matthew writing the manuscript himself.
Rebecca Simms, from the Department of Mathematical Sciences, has also been nominated for her project entitled ‘Pricing and Simulations of Catastrophe Risk Bonds’.
The winners will be announced at a ceremony in London at the end of September, before an audience of technology students, academics, senior industry executives as well as senior figures from government, scientific and technical institutions and the media.
For more information about options for study in the Department of Chemistry, why not visit the University of Liverpool Open Day on Saturday 28th September. For more information visit: http://www.liv.ac.uk/study/openday/.
