The ICE group has a new member: Julia will be working on C-H activation at single-atom alloy catalysts. The project involves collaboration with Michail Stamatakis from UCL’s Department of Chemical Engineering. We hope you will have a pleasant and productive time in the ICE group!

In a recently published Nature Reviews Chemistry article, titled “Surface premelting of water ice”, Ben Slater and Angelos review the current understanding of the quasi-liquid layer (QLL) that forms on the surface of ice. The review describes how advances in experimental and computational techniques furthered our understanding in the years since Faraday first postulated the […]

Angelos will be running this year’s London Marathon with the aim of setting a new world record for the “fastest marathon dressed as a scientist (male)”. He is running in support of WaterAid, an international charity working to provide clean water and decent toilets to people all over the world. To find out more and […]

For his contribution “A Machine Learning Potential for Carbon”, Patrick was awarded a Best Poster prize at this year’s TYC Student Day! He was one of the four winners chosen from more than 30 poster presentations, which highlighted the excellent research conducted within the Thomas Young Centre. Patrick had also won the Best Poster prize […]

The proposal titled “New Frontiers for Material Modeling via Machine Learning Techniques with Quantum Monte Carlo” was awarded a 2019 Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) grant by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The project lead by Dario Alfè and in collaboration with Gábor Csányi in Cambridge involves […]

We are happy to welcome some new people who joined the group over the last few weeks. Tai is doing a postdoc in a joint UCL – BP project. Fabian is sharing his PhD time between UCL and Imperial College. Michael already did his Master project in our group and is now continuing his work […]

Congratulations to Martin, who finished his viva last week! His work focused on ice nucleation, in particular on finding descriptors that indicate good ice nucleating agents and the role of dynamical heterogeneity in homogeneous ice nucleation.

Yesterday morning’s adverse weather conditions (to put it mildly) made the triathlon even more challenging. The swimmers had to cope with very cold water, the hilly bike track was dangerously slippery and the running track was mostly covered in mud. Undeterred, both teams completed the triathlon – soaking wet (even the ones that didn’t swim!) […]

The next issue of The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters will feature cover art from the perspective article ‘Lonely Atoms with Special Gifts: Breaking Linear Scaling Relationships in Heterogeneous Catalysis with Single-Atom Alloys’ by Matthew T. Darby, Michail Stamatakis, Angelos Michaelides, and E. Charles H. Sykes. The cover depicts the atomic structure of a so-called […]

After last year’s phenomenal victory, the ICE group is participating for the second time in the Hever Castle Triathlon. This year, there will be two relay teams: Phil, Gabriele, and Angelos will compete again in the half-ironman, while Andrea, his wife Sara, and Patrick will compete over the Olympic distance. The ICE group is not only trying […]