UK Surface Analysis Forum Winter Meeting 2014

2014 at the NNNC got off to a bright start, by hosting the winter UKSAF (UK Surface Analysis Forum) on 7th and 8th January. The first day was a free workshop focused on Multivariate Analysis and was led by Prof Bonnie Tyler (National Physical Laboratory), with the afternoon sessions led by Dr Jonathan Burley (Nottingham), Dr John Walton (Manchester) and Dr Alex Henderson (Manchester/SurfaceSpectra).

Wednesday saw the main meeting that was opened by Professor Clive Roberts, the head of the School of Pharmacy and former director of the NNNC. The day proceeded with a variety of scientific and technical talks from Prof Pete Licence (Nottingham) who presented work on ionic liquids and the NNNC’s new X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy instrument, which was followed by Samuel Lesko from Bruker. There were presentations from Dr Richard Beanland (Warwick), Stuart Boden (Southampton) on electron diffraction and Helium ion respectively. After a long lunch-break with plenty of opportunity for discussion and a chance to see the NNNC’s new XPS lab, the afternoon session focused on nano and micro-scale characterisation using XPS (Phi), ToF-SIMS (Tascon) and their application to drug nanoparticles (Joke Meeus, Leuven).   There was also a presentation to Nottingham's own Dr Mischa Zelzer from the School of Pharmacy, who was the inaugural winner of the John Vickerman Prize for achievements by an early career scientist. The attendance at the event was around 90, much better than the predicted 70 delegates who were registered on by the 2nd January. All in all, a great way to start the year!

Chris Parmenter