Teaching Complete

The new academic year is firmly underway. Patrick had front loaded his teaching, and finished his 10 lecture course in reaction rate theory and statistical mechanics at the beginning of November.

We have also submitted two funding applications, one to the Royal Society Equipment Fund, and the other to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council New Investigator Award. The stakes are high for the latter of the two, and it would really kick start things in our lab. Fingers crossed.

Neil Barnes (our senior technician) has been helping us clear out the laboratory, including arranging the removal of a 2 tonne superconducting magnet that had been sitting unused in lab A54 for the better part of 15 years. Now that the decks are cleared, we will start with some infrastructure improvements to the lab, including setting up a plant room with all the backing pumps and chillers, and installing ceiling mounted gantry in each experimental hutch. From there, the plan is to put together some dedicated storage in the unused hutch to keep vacuum chamber components, etc. That will let us get everything off of the floor in the two main hutches so that we can give the room a thorough (and 20 years overdue) deep clean, before we wheel in any fancy new laser systems that may or may not be arriving in the not-to-distant future.

We’ll keep you posted.