Prestigious Zeolite Award for Diamond/Birmingham student
Tom Carey, a Diamond/University of Birmingham PhD student who has been working on the synchrotron's Powder Diffraction beamline (I11), has been presented with the British Zeolite Association's Founders' Award for the most promising postgraduate student of the year. Tom received his Founders' cup trophy and cash prize at the British Zeolite Association's 35th Annual Meeting in Chester on the 19th July.
Using X-ray powder diffraction studies, Tom's PhD has focused on how zeolites behave as a function of temperature. This area of research is of great interest to industry as zeolites have applications in petroleum production, pollution control, chemical sensing and gas separation. They are also heavily used in washing detergents and as moisture absorbers in double glazed windows. Results from experiments undertaken at Diamond, and published in the Journal Chemical Communications, show that the thermal expansion behaviour of zeolites with the LTA topology vary greatly depending on the pore contents.
Pictured right: Tom Carey receiving his award from Alan Dyer (middle), who was one of the original Founders of the BZA, and Dave Law (left) who is the outgoing Chairman.
Tom has been working with Paul Anderson and Joseph Hriljac, his supervisors, at the University of Birmingham and Chiu Tang and his team on beamline I11. On being selected for the award, Tom says, "I'm really thrilled. It is extremely motivating to have my research recognised in this way at such an early stage in my career. I'm very fortunate as I've had great support at my university and at Diamond and I'm looking forward to carrying out more synchrotron experiments on zeolites in the future."
The Founders' Award is for UK based postgraduate scientists working in the area of micro and/or meso porous science. It is aimed to celebrate the best and/or most promising postgraduate scientist of the year. The Award has been devised in Honour of Lovat Rees, one of the father figures of British Zeolite Science and one of the founders of the British Zeolite Association.
In addition, five student prizes were awarded as part of the annual meeting. These were sponsored by Diamond.
Conference student prize winners with Dave Law, they are (left to right): Kenta Iyoki, University of Tokyo, best poster 2nd place; Jérémy Dhainaut, Université de Haute-Alsace, tied for best student talk; Hayley Green, University of Central Lancashire, special prize for best undergraduate poster presentation; Ling Qin, The University of Manchester, best poster 1st place and Nils Zimmermann, Hamburg University of Technology, tied for best student talk.
For more information on the British Zeolite Association, please visit www.bza.org