Picture diary
More or less in reverse chronological order. Also pictures from before 2014.
Some pictures of people (and things) in 2024
30 June 2024: Profs. Howe-Siang Tan (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) and Yoshitaka Tanimura (Kyoto) were at the CMDS conference in York and came over to Glasgow to walk up Ben Nevis.
Taka in the fog somewhere reasonably close to teh summit.
Howe-Siang, me, Guus Wijnne, and Taka at the summit cairn.
Beer and pizza after.
27 June 2024: Some cool time-resolved rheology (DMA) experiments with Ben, Manlio Tassieri, and Andrea Jannina Fernandez.
1 May 2024: Our Boson peak paper being discussed in the Annual Report of teh Research Center for Thermal and Enropic Science (Osaka University).
15 March 2024: Group lunch in Ramen Dayo
Some pictures of people (and things) in 2023
15 December 2023: Physical Chemistry christmas dinner with Zhiyu, Beth, ?, Affar, Ben, Chris, Adrian, Malcolm, and Pablo
11 December 2023: Celebrating the acceptance of Mario's paper in JACS.
2 December 2023: UCP group (early) christmas lunch
With Laure-Anne, Bethany Burt (project student), Mario, Zhiyu, Chris, Ben, and me
28 November 2023: Physical Chemistry dinner with Hans, Gordon, Beth, Affar, Pablo, Adrian, Frances, Malcolm, and me
13 October 2023: Physical Chemistry piss up... (me, Pablo, Adrian, Hans, Malcolm, and Dave)
August 2023: GRC on Liquids
30 July - 4 August: The Gordon Conference on the Chemistry and Physics of Liquids.
On teh way to teh conference: Nederland!
On the way back home obligatory mountain to run up: Bierstadt (4,287 m, 14,065ft)
14 July 2023: The Telluride Vibrational Dynamics meeting
12 June 2023: TRVS in Amsterdam. Huib Bakker in front of the TRVS logo I designed.
Bitterballen time!
Conference dinner with Ted
Lunch in the red light district
24 May 2023: Ben soldering in a dry box...
25 March 2023: Physical Chemistry section dinner in Ka Pao with KW, Gordon Hedley, Pablo Docampo, Adrian Lapthorn, Hans Senn, Smita Odedra, Malcolm Kadodwala, and Affar Karimula.
24 March 2023: Zhiyu, Ben, and Ankita in the little museum in the Kerr building
2 March 2023: Some interestign x-ray data to look at!
24 Februarary 2023: Chemical Photonics RA and PhD student night out
Mario, Zhiyu, Ben, and Ankita
Some pictures of people (and things) in 2022
16 December 2022: Christmas lunch of the Chemical Photonics group at Elena's Spanish bar & Restaurant
28 October 2022: Moody skies over the Gilbert Scott Building
20 September 2022: We were welcoming new postdoc Dr. Ankita Das to the group today!
9 September 2022: Is this FTIR cute or what?!
8 August 2022: Met with the ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands Karol van Oosterom to talk about scientific cooperation between Scotland and the Netherlands (also with Esther Mijers and Job Thijssen of the University of Edinburgh and embassyc staff member Laura van Voorst Vader). I clearly dressed up for the occasion...
20 May 2022: Slightly delayed (...) Christmas lunch 🎅🎄 of the Chemical Photonics group in Mother India. No crackers 😢 but lovely food! 🥘With Malcolm Kadodwala, Affar Karimula, Hans Senn, Mario, Zhiyu, and many more.
19 May 2022
Dr. Nicolás Flores-González preparing a sample for ssNMRunder argon. Amazing he could get the tiny screw cap into the NMR insert correctly with three layers of gloves! Sample off to collaborators in Slovenia to be measured.
20 April 2022
BBC Arabic was visiting the lab to report on our mosquito spectroscopy work published recently in Nature Communications. With Mario and Francesco
4 March
Dim Sum in the Dim Sum Restaurant with Chris (who took the picture), Ben, Zhiyu, KW, and Mario
3 March
Sunset over the Kelvingrove Museum
3 March
The Anton Paar MCR 702e rheometer with temperature control from -160 to +600C is all up and running now.
With Ben
11 February
Drinks to celebrate Andy Farrell passing his PhD viva on 3 Feb. with Mario, Nicki, Andy, KW, Ben, Chris, and Zhiyu.
Champagne earlier in the lab
9 February
Wahey, our lovely new Anton Paar rheometer has arrived!
Some pictures of people (and things) in 2021
29 November
PhD student Sarah Huynen has become the first person in the 25-year history of the UCP research group to have done a chemical synthesis! We only own lasers and things like that (possibly a couple of lab coats), but Dr. Joëlle Prunet was kind enough to let us use her lab
29 October
Chemical Photonics (super) group meeting
26 October
Zhiyu at the confocal Raman microscope and optical tweezing set-up he has built.
29 September
Ben, Mario, and I had 24 hours on beamline I22 at the Diamond Light Source. This was Ben and Mario's first time at the DLS.
Mario at the WAXS/SAXS set-up
Our sample cryogenically cooled in a Linkam stage.
Social distancing...
Ben placing a sample in teh Linkam stage
Data!
24 September
Desirable numberplate...
28 August 2021
Cloud inversion over Loch Lomond (just north of Glasgow)
20 June 2021
Watchign the partial solar eclipse from the office (with Mario, Zhiyu, Ben, and Sarah)
26 May 2021
Celebrating that Mario's G4 paper got accepted by PCCP with some Patxaran (a sloe-flavoured liqueur)
18 January 2021
Whiteboard...
15 January
Zoom group meeting. Zhiyu, me, Chris, Ben, Sarah, Mario, and Nikita.
some pictures of people (and things) in 2020
11 November 2020
Playing around using phase separation and dyes with Sarah Huynen. Might use this for lectures but is also inspiration for research.
9 September 2020
Polarisation microscopy photo of a spherulite in n-butanol taken by Chris Syme.
17 August 2020
Zhiyu Liao's tweezing set-up allowing Raman scattering is starting to shape up nicely.
8 April 2020
The "new normal": academic staff meeting via Zoom (BTW, I'm not really drinking a beer at 11am!)
31 March 2020
Some chemistry at home with my son Guus
13 March 2020
Mario cleaning up the corridor to the labs after a student visitor might have Covid-19
10 March 2020
Our new dynamic light scattering (DLS) machine was installed today. Ben Russell helping
2 March 2020
Visited project student at Daresbury lab and got to see the free electron laser, which is pretty impressive.
On the way home, tried a quick dash up Striding Edge on Helvellyn in the Lake District. Made it all the way to the hard climb down but got scared off by the final snowy slope.
some pictures of people (and things) in 2019
31 December 2019: Inversion over Loch Lomond on a run up and down Ben Lomond
10 December 2019: Congratulations to Finlay Walton who passed his PhD viva today with minor corrections. Thanks to external Andy Alexander and internal Adrian Lapthorn.
6 October 2019: Quick run up Beinn an Lochain
20 September 2019: Celebrating that our mosquito spectroscopy / machine learning paper was wfinally accepted, with Frencesco Baldini and Mario González Jiménez.
18 September, 2019: Last ULTRA/Octopus access panel meeting at RAL/LFS in Didcot.
August 2019: ACS meeting and JACS editorial board meeting in San Diego. Was interogated on chemistry and crystal nucleation by imigration in Salt Lake...
Ice cream with Damien Laage, errrrr Swiss guy, Erik Nibbering, and Mischa Bonn.
July 2019: Telluride Research Conference on vibrational spectrosocpy. Ran up Mt Elbert (4400m) afterwards.
Mt Elbert summit.
12 April, 2019: Multi-way multi-continent Skype meeting with our collaborators Heather Ferguson, Francesco Baldini, Roger Sanou, Fredros Okumu, Doreen Siria, and Simon Babayan.
29 March, 2019: On our way to the 2019 Ultrafast Chemical Physics in Scotland meeting in Edinburgh. Mario is wearing his Nature Chemistry USB key...
20 March, 2019: Got the news that my ERC Advanced grant was funded! €2.5M to study the use of optical tweezing to control (crystal) nucleation.
7 March, 2019: Uh, oh! Our laser table is being moved, so they can build a temporary wall, so teh windows of the labs can be changed. Will be bit of a mess for a while...
Mario crying...
26 February, 2019: Talk in teh Chemistry departmemt at Oxford and time for another run along the river in the morning cold.
3-5 February, 2019: Work visit to Lyon (talk at teh Solvate Workshop) but also some time for a long run through the city and over two of its big hills.
14 January, 2019: Undergrad Jamie McEwem and PhD student Finlay Walton discovered a different crytsalline phase of TPP. With Claire Wilson, they discovered it was a new polymorph that turns out to be really important for another story. More later...
9 January, 2019: Was handed the RSC Chemical Dynamics award at the SDG meeting
some pictures of people (and things) in 2018
22 December, 2018: Our mosquito work made it into the christmas (22 December 2018) issue of The Economist. Fraunhofer lines?!?! Anyway, the gist is about right and at least they mention Mario González Jiménez and Fredros Okumu.
17-20 October, 2018: Experiments on beamline B22 at the Diamond Light Source. Me, Finlay Walton, John Bolling, and Andrew Farrell in the B22 lab.
Setting up the experiments with Gianfelice CinqueÂ
Finlay doing some tweaking
The Diamond Light Source is big...
Finlay attempting to set a KOM around teh accelerator
Yay!! The results we were looking for!
19-31 August, 2018: JACS meeting Boston, SPIE meeting San Diego, ICORS 2018 in Jeju. Boston during early morning run.
Uh oh...
Conference dinner ICORS 2018
Mmm nice Korean food!
4 August 2018: Spot of glacier/mountain running...
29 June 2018: Mario and me submitting the mosquito paper, finally!
15 June: Watching football world cup...
1-8 April 2018: Visit to our collaborators at the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania.
Mario disappointed that water doesn't drain clockwise south of the equator (at Kilimanjaro airport)
Mario boarding the little plane from Dar es Salam to Ifakara.
The region around Ifakara is fertile and wet, hence mosquitoes and malaria.
Made it after they got the cows off the runway...
Early morning run
Pfff, I only distracted him a bit...
5 March 2018: Yay, at 4pm our Nature Chemistry paper "Control over phase separation and nucleation using a laser-tweezing potential" came out.
8 February 2018: Some random lab pictures. Finlay Walton using the Olympus microscope.
Liquid-liquid phase separation in a mixture of nitrobenzene-decane with a bit of methylene blue dye added.
Sitting on a cold block.
Andy Farrell operating the cryostat in the FTIR used to look for liquid-liquid transitions in water.
some pictures of people (and things) in 2017
1 December 2017: D&S group meeting. Stoplight...
27 October 2017: Judith Reichenbach passed her PhD viva today. Below with Finlay Walton, John Bolling, Mario González Jiménez, and Steve Meech. (Yes, I know the double bonds in the porphyrin ring are not correct...)
28 September 2017: Joanna (Asia) Mosses passed her PhD viva today. Celebrating with champagne in coffee cups with the external examiner Prof Dr Mischa Bonn (Director at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, Germany) and Asia.
Asia, KW, Andrew Farrell, and Finlay Walton.
The external relaxing a bit after the viva...
23-28 July 2017: We went to the 8th International Discussion Meeting on Relaxations in Complex Systems. Fireworks after the conference dinner
16-21 July 2017: We attended the Time Resolved Vibrational Spectroscopy Meeting in Cambridge. Here a picture of the conference dinner with Susan Quinn, Chris Cheatum, Paul Donaldson, Neil Hunt, Siva Umapathy, and Tony Parker.
1 June 2017: Kick-off meeting of the MIMI (mosquito) project in Glasgow. Here is Mario showing off our spectroscopic technique to Niang (Dr Abdoulaye Niang, IRSS, Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso), Fred (Dr Fredros O. Okumu, Ifakara Health Institute, Tanzania), Doreen (Dr Doreen Josen, Ifakara Health Institute, Dar es Salaam), and Francesco (Dr Francesco Baldini, Institute of Biodiversity Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, GU). Also there for the two days were Dr Lisa Ranford-Cartwright (Institute of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation, GU), Dr Heather Fergu-son and Paul Johnson (Institute of Biodiversity Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, GU).
26 May 2017: Drinks while the weather is nice with Mario, Finlay, Chris, Malcolm, Joy, and Smita
1-5 April 2017: Went to the JACS Editorial board meeting and the ACS National Meeting in San Francisco. Last minute invite for a talk in the "Long Range Correlated Motions in Proteins" session organised by Andrea Markelz.
23 February 2017: Goodbye dinner for Gopa who is off to India. From left to right: Klaas, Mario, Gopa, Chris, Andy, Judith, and Finlay.
some pictures of people (and things) in 2016
16 December: Dynamics & Structure group christmas lunch
6 October: The fire alarm went off in Chemistry when there were undergrad labs on.
1 October: Today, Andrew Farrell joined the group, who will be doing ultrafast spectroscopy on liquids, nucleation, and phase transitions using OKE and hopefully aso some 2D-IR in collaboration with Neil Hunt at Strathclyde.
30 September 2016: Our brand spanking new Spectra Physics Spirit One laser was installed today. It's shiny...! This will be used by PhD student Finlay Walton in a microscopy set-up to manipulate chemical matter using spatial light modulators, optical tweezers, etc. in collaboration with organic chemist David France.
31 July - 5 August: Gordon Research Conference on Water & Aqueous Solutions.
Infrared movie taken by Phil Mason on YouTube.
5 July: The group was visited by Spain's Consul General on invitation by Mario. Here Mario is explaining the crushing of mosquitos...
3 June: I got to meet first minister Nicola Sturgeon. I was too embarrassed to ask Nicola for a selfie but I think Anton Muscatelli may have taken a photie on his phone. I did get a photo of School of Chemistry students Roberta, Oriol (Catalan independence supporter), and Josefa talking to her for a few seconds before been elbowed out of the way by a pushy academic.
15-18 April: We had a 72 houremergency accessto the Diamond Light Source. Here are Chris Syme, Judith Reichenbach, and Finlay Walton in the control room of beamline I22.
Chris about to check for radiation
Judith and Finlay in the beamline hutch
The sample
Finlay off to set a FKT around the Diamond synchrotron
23 March: Bob Hill's last ever lecture before retiring this summer.
18 January: Rob Liskamp on learning from Muffy Calder that the University intends to build a giant bridge through his (and my) lab...
8 January: Chris trying out his new lights from growing "chillies"
some pictures of people (and things) in 2015
18 December: Last Dynamics & Structure seminar of the year and D&S christmas lunch + pub extravaganza... (all today's photos by Mario) Finlay, Judith, Mario, and Chris in the office.
D&S seminar with Elliott and Mario.
Mario?
D&S Christmas lunch
8 December: Neil Hunt (Strathclyde, Physics) opening our meeting of the Biomolecular spectroscopy & dynamics Cluster (BioC) on Tuesday 8 December 2015.
26 November: Final year project student Elliott Reedy explaining mosquito IR spectroscopy at a local meeting on disease vectors.
8 November: Talk at Sheffield-Hallam on Monday, good excuse to go running the 30km Edale Skyline in the Peak District...
4 November: Celebrating a new EPSRC grant with David France.
6-10 September: The Joint European Molecular Liquids Group (EMLG) and the Japanese Molecular Liquids Group (JMLG) meeting in Rostock.
First time giving a talk with a phone + iPad...went OK.
Looking very suspicious at the poster session
21-26 June: Conferences, such as the 2015 International Conference on Time-Resolved Vibrational Spectroscopy (TRVS) in Madison, WI, are always a dignified affair... Neil Hunt, Erik Nibbering, and Suan Quinn.
Myself
1 June 2015: We were joined by Finlay Walton, initially as summer project student for summer 2015 and in October as a PhD student. The summer project involves the study of mosquitoes while the PhD project will be on microscopy of phase transitions.
22/23 April 2015: We went to the Diamond Light Source for experiments on the I22 beam line on phase transitions in liquids
The synchrotron from above
Chris at the beam-line
There was bit of a problem: no x-rays... Nick Terrill and Andy
Chris setting up the sample cell at midnight
Load, aim, fire death rays!
Control room at 1:30am
Last target at ~4am.
25 March 2015: Judith's birthday.
27 February 2015: Our fancy new glove box arrived and is being set up by Mario and Chris.
some pictures of people (and things) in 2014
23 October 2014: Photo of a mosquito being analysed by near-infrared spectroscopy by undergraduate student Thomas Glew and postdoc Mario Gonzalez-Jimenez. Mosquito spectroscopy project involving Klaas Wynne (Chemistry), Dr Lisa Ranford-Cartwright (Institute of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation, GU), Dr Heather Ferguson (Institute of Biodiversity Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, GU), Dr Francesco Baldini (Institute of Biodiversity Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, GU) – spectroscopy of mosquitoes.
17 October 2014: Some photos from the lab.
Dr Chris Syme carrying out fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) on a cooled liquid sample held in a Linkam cryogenic microscopy stage.
Dr Gopa Ramakrishnan holding up a sample of cytochrome C to be studied with ultrafast spectroscopy in the UCP lab.
Dr Mario González Jiménez holding up a tube with mosquitoes. These are used in a spectroscopy project in collaboration with MVLS.
14 October: The newest group members - a collection of mosquitoes. Unfortunately (for them) they will have to die in the name of science...
19 March: Playing with the brand spanking new FTIR with Mario and Gopa
21 February: Today Dr Gopakumar Ramakrishnan joined the group as a research assistant to work on terahertz spectroscopy.
16 February: KW after climbing the North Buttress of the Buchaille
Updated version of We Love Chemicals
