Members of the team attended the RSC Carbohydrate Interest Group Annual Meeting at Queens University Belfast. Joe gave an oral presentation in the Great Hall. There were many interesting international speakers including Alexander Titz and Ulf Nilssen, as well as contributors from the UK and Ireland. The event was co-sponsored by the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland also (Division on Medicinal Chemistry), making it an excellent all-island event. Thanks to Gerd Wagner and Aisling Ní Cheallaigh, among others, for organising.
This meeting also gave an opportunity for the first in-person meeting of the full team of the SugarCoat North South Research Programme project – funded by the Shared Island Fund and the HEA. Postdoc Dr Hannah Crory has been working in the Wylie/McCoy lab in the School of Pharmacy, QUB.
Karol delivered an oral presentation at the Irish Universities Chemistry Research Colloquium in UCD on 15 June 2022 entitled “Shining a Light on Bacteria : Lanthanide- based Glycoconjugate Molecular Sensors for Lectins”. The talk was very well received, with lots of discussion arising afterwards. The judges at the Colloquium, the highlight of the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland’s scientific calendar, awarded her a prize for her talk.
Prof. Declan Gilheany (UCD) awarding Karolina a prize for her presentation at the Colloquium
Joe was invited by the GlycoBio club at Massachusetts Institute of Technology about his recent article in RSC Advances, along with other work from the group. Carbohydrate researchers from MIT and other institutes in the Cambridge area tuned in to watch the talk and ask questions. Dr Adele Gabba hosted the seminar.
Joe delivered a seminar to postgraduate students and academic staff at Keele University as part of their annual Seminar Series. Joe was invited to speak by Dr Chris Hawes, Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry at Keele. The seminar was entitled “Sweetness and light: a journey towards diagnostic tools” and described the research which underpins the current work in the Byrne group as well as some recent results.
Joe gave an oral presentation about his work with carbohydrate-functionalised metal complexes at the 2020 Irish Biological Inorganic Chemistry Symposium in November. The annual IBICS meeting, and subsequent AGM, were held online this year and were well attended. Before his talk, Prof Celine Marmion, the president of IBICS, drew attention again to his role in organising the ICI Postgraduate Chemistry Research Symposium in September. The talk was followed by a number of questions from the attendees.
She thoroughly enjoyed attending the event as a whole and would like to congratulate all the speakers and organisers for a fantastic job bringing postgraduate scientists in Ireland together even in these times, when sharing and exchanging knowledge in traditional ways is very challenging if not impossible. She is looking forward to next year’s event!
The Lindau-Nobel Laureate Online Science Days event was hosted online to replace the annual meeting on the island of Lindau in Germany, as a result of the Coronavirus crisis. Those who were scheduled to attend this year’s Interdisciplinary Meeting were invited, as were attendees of previous Lindau meetings. The result was an engaging programme of events over three 12-hour days (in order to accommodate people in various time zones). Topics included diversity in the sciences, climate change, the economic impact of the pandemic, and green chemistry, among many others.
Joe asking Nobel Laureate Prof. Noyori about different solvents used in ‘green’ catalysis.
Joe had the chance to engage directly with Prof. Ryoji Noyori about questions of homogeneous organometallic catalysis – a topic he investigated during his postdoc in University of Bern – and solvent choice for green chemistry. This direct communication with Nobel laureates went on all through the event and was a unique opportunity.
On Wednesday, the top-ranked projects from the “Implementing the Lindau Guidelines” category of the Sciathon contest were invited to present their projects on the main stage and look for further support. Joe and Natalia Jiménez (University of Chile) represented Team Elmiger, and won the 3rd place prize. Watch the Sciathon Results presentation here: https://www.mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org/videos/38750/2020-osd-sciathon-results-lindau-guidelines/meeting-2020
Joe and Natalia Jiménez presenting their Sciathon project results on the Science Days Main Stage
Hopefully, the scheduled 70th Lindau-Nobel Laureate Meeting will take place in 2021 and there will be a chance to attend in person.
Joe was invited to present an online seminar by Prof Abhay Pandit, the Director of the CÚRAM Centre for Medical Device Research. Prof Pandit is one of the collaborators from CÚRAM involved in the group’s SIRG project. Joe gave a presentation titled: “Sweetness and light: a journey towards diagnostic tools based on luminescent glycoclusters”, where he explained to a multidisciplinary audience how his prior research interests led towards the current research programme that the Byrne Group is investigating. There was some good discussion after the seminar.
Joe was invited to give a talk as part of the series of Early Career Researcher webinars that the Royal Society of Chemistry Interest Group are organising this summer. His talk was titled: “Metals and carbohydrates: organometallic catalysts & bacterial lectin‐targeting glycoclusters”
At the annual RSC Coordination and Organometallic Discussion Group Christmas meeting (UCD Dublin), everyone was asked to select an element as the focus of their talk, to celebrate the end of the International Year of the Periodic Table. Joe gave a talk celebrating the versatility of ruthenium complexes. The talk brought together two different project, linked by this transition metal.
Joe with his PhD supervisor Thorri and Dawn Barry
IYPT presents for attendees
He spoke about the carbohydrate-functionalised Ru-NHC catalysts which were published recently in Dalton Transactions, as well as some Ru(II) coordination complexes (also featuring carbohydrates) which have shown antimicrobial activity (unpublished results, collaboration with Prof Thorri Gunnlaugsson and Dr Ciaran O’Reilly).
It was a very festive meeting, with inorganic chemists from all over Ireland and the UK in attendance – a great chance to catch up with old friends and new.
Byrne Research Group 