Hobday Research Group

08/08/22 We are hiring a computational PDRA

As part of Claire's UKRI FLF, the group is a PDRA in computational materials discovery.

We are looking to study the properties of barocaloric materials via simulation, and work with informatics to find ways to predict new materials and their barocaloric properties.

If you are interested in phase transitions, high-pressure properties of crystals, molecular simulation, programming, machine learning, then this could be a position for you!

Please see the ad here: job advert

If you are interested, please email Claire for informal inquiries.

27/05/22 Welcome James!

James Chi has joined the Hobday research group for his MSc Research project.

James' project will be on the effect of cycling and hysteresis on solid-state phase transitions.

Welcome James!

13/05/22 We are hiring PDRAs!

As part of Claire's UKRI FLF, the group is hiring 2 PDRAs.

The first advert is out is for our project looking at plastic crystals under pressure via crystallography.

If you are interested in phase transitions, twinning, scattering methods and high-pressure instrumentation, then this could be a position for you!

Please see the ad here: job advert

If you are interested, please email Claire for informal inquiries.

Keep your eyes out for a 2nd PDRA position opening soon in computational exploration of high-pressure phase transitions.

01/05/22 Philly wins a prize at the BCA!

This blog post was written by Philly Partridge, a 1st year PhD student in the group on her experience of attending the BCA Spring Meeting.

Philly won the YCG BCA poster prize for her work on plastic crystals under pressure!

You can read more about it on the School of Chemistry website here:

www.chem.ed.ac.uk/news-events/news/poster-prize-success

Congratulations to Philly!

01/05/22 The Group goes to the BCA!

This blog post was written by Philly Partridge, a 1st year PhD student in the group on her experience of attending the BCA Spring Meeting.

"In April of this year, I attended my first ever conference, the British Crystallographic Association spring meeting held in Leeds. I’ll be honest, I was anxious leading up to the event and had many questions about what to expect.

Having submitted an abstract for a poster presentation, I felt trepidation about presenting my own research and daunted by the thought of networking with established researchers and even other graduate students. With our current research group consisting of only Claire and myself, I was lacking the safety blanket of other group members to socialise with. All of this to say, I was well out of my comfort zone.

Throughout the week, students and academics both were extremely welcoming. I immediately felt accepted into the crystallographic community and I’m glad to report that my fears were unfounded.

For me, the poster sessions were one of the highlights. It was encouraging to see work from fellow postgrads, all at different stages within their projects. I was glad for the opportunity to share my research over a glass of wine and get to know some of my peers from other institutions.

The conference consisted of five very busy days, the majority of which were spent attending scientific presentations. To summarise my thoughts, intimidating and inspirational are just some words that come to mind. As you may know, they often split up the talks into categories and run some sessions in parallel. Some of these sessions I chose to attend out of sheer interest, going into the talks knowing little of the topic but gaining a quick-fire summary of the research and learning a lot about what it takes to be an engaging presenter. Others, I attended for their relevance to my PhD topic. I found myself jotting down techniques and new ideas that could be applied to my own project later down the line. It was a genuine joy to hear everyone present their work. I found people’s enthusiasm for their research infectious and overall, I left Leeds feeling motivated to continue with my project and excited for the future. "

Philly Partridge, May 2022