I am an Irishman currently living in Galway. By profession I am a researcher in the field of chemistry and I have wide interests in terms of travel, music, language, science and current affairs. I am part cynic, part idealist and love a good argument. || SIRG Research Fellow at NUI Galway || Co-host of "80 Days: an exploration podcast"
After a long pause, 80 Days is back! I’m particularly proud of the interview with Prof Lamont Lindstrom in this episode. He had some fascinating things to say about the origins and practices of cargo cults – to which we could probably devote a whole episode!
In this episode of 80 Days: An Exploration Podcast, we’ll be talking about The Republic of Vanuatu, a Pacific island country located in the South Pacific Ocean, around 1,700 kilometres (or 1,000 miles) east of northern Australia and 540 kilometres (340 miles) northeast of New Caledonia.
First inhabited by Melanesian people around 3,000 years ago, parts of the archipelago were settled by British and French colonists in the 1800s, and in 1906 France and the United Kingdom agreed to administer the islands jointly in a unique form of government known as the British-French Condominium. Vanuatu gained its independence in July 1980, and is today home to around 270,000 people.
Only around 65 of the archipelago’s 82 islands are inhabited, and although the country is spread across 12,200 square kilometres (4,700 sq mi) its land surface is very limited to around 4,700 square kilometres or 1,800 sq…
The Public Session of the Dillon Centenary Symposium is available to view on YouTube. This includes the Dillon Threesis Challenge (young researchers talking about their work for 3 minutes with zero jargon), a chemistry-inspired ballet and historical talk about Prof Dillon.
Selected lectures from the Scientific Session are available as a playlist here.
Not all lectures were broadcast. Consult the programme to see who is currently speaking. The “Public Session” from 17.00 GMT was broadcast.
Update 20/12/2019: More edited videos of the threesis and ballet, filmed from various angles are now available as a playlist here.
I was delighted to be included on the organising committee of this very interesting event in NUI Galway. We are celebrating a century of carbohydrate research in Galway, beginning with the appointment of Prof Dillon (a republican revolutionary and chemist) as Professor of Chemistry in 1919. His research into alginates and polysaccharides from seaweed has been succeeded by a range of research in chemistry, biochemistry, botany, energy, medicine and medical devices, with an ever-evolving understanding of the roles of sugars in nature. We will showcase as much of this as we can fit into one day.
In the evening, a chemistry-inspired ballet “Kekulé’s Dream” and a historical lecture about Dillon (created by his granddaughters Ester and Honor O Brolchain, respectively) will help engage the general public in these topics, and 7 young researchers will take up the challenge of explaining why their research matters in 3 minutes, with zero jargon allowed (the Dillon “Threesis” Challenge).
[Event supported by SFI, RSC Republic of Ireland Local Section, CÚRAM and NUI Galway]
I’m delighted to finally publish this work, the first of my research carried out during my Marie Curie Fellowship in University of Bern to come out. A lot of hard work by Erasmus student Pauline went into gathering data behind this manuscript where we asked the question – what impact would incorporating carbohydrates into the structure of a Ruthenium(II)-triazolylidene complex have on its ability to convert a ketone to an alcohol via transfer hydrogenation catalysis.
There were challenges in isolating the desired compound, so it had to be generated in situ, but we were able to assess the activity, and the results were interesting, and can be found in detail here in Dalton Transactions.
To summarise the conclusions: The carbohydrate functionality does impact catalytic activity (transfer hydrogenation of ketones). In complexes with the glucose directly triazolylidene-bound, turnover rates were substantially higher when compared to more remote carbohydrate functionalisation (i.e. with an ethylene spacer). Both new complexes, however, have reduced activity compared to unfunctionalised carbene complexes. Insight was also gained into the nature of the catalytic cycle through a substrate scope analysis.
A very personal episode of 80 Days, marking the close of the Swiss chapter of my life. I’ll always have fond memories of the quirky aspects of Switzerland, but it’s definitely time to move home.
In this minisode, Joe explores, literally, the idea of an exclave after wandering into one a couple of years ago. Although we’ve covered a couple of enclaves in the past (including San Marino and The Gambia), this episode is the first time we’ve examined the opposite concept – a tiny piece of a country marooned inside another’s borders.
This is also something of a personal episode for Joe (@anbeirneach), as it marks an end to his time living in Switzerland. Luke (@thelukejkelly) and Mark (@markboyle86) also feature, and we discuss briefly our upcoming fourth season, which is due in a couple of weeks.
For the curious, you can find more on the German enclave of Büsingen am Hochrhein here on Atlas Obscura, or read this article on BigThink. The New York Times article quoted in the episode can be found here
I was honoured at a ceremony today with Minister Pat Breen to be awarded a Starting Investigator Research Grant (SIRG) by Science Foundation Ireland. This SIRG award will allow me to begin a programme of independent research in NUI Galway in the coming months and begin to build my own research group.
Me, pictured with James Lawless TD (Fianna Fáil Science and Technology Spokesperson) and Minister Pat Breen TD (Minister of State with special responsibility for Trade, Employment, Business, EU Digital Single Market and Data Protection) outside the Irish Parliament
Asked about the purpose of SIRG on RTÉ’s Drivetime programme, Prof. Mark Ferguson (Director General of SFI) said “it’s about launching the careers of very bright, young scientists in Ireland”, and indeed it’s a very important programme to allow people like me to return home and start independent research.
My research will develop novel devices that will indicate the presence of specific bacteria through colour changes (modulating luminescence), using interactions of their proteins with sugar-based chemical compounds on the surface of newly-designed materials. This will provide a convenient visual strategy to identify disease-causing bacteria. 3D-Printing will be used to create these compact diagnostic devices, which will benefit patient outcomes and quality of life.
I got interested in fluorescent sensor materials and the chemistry of sugars during my PhD research in Trinity College Dublin with Prof Gunnlaugsson (Irish Research Council Scholarship, 2010-15). Over the last few years in University of Bern, Switzerland, I have been further exploring the role of sugars in catalysis as part of my Marie Curie Fellowship with Prof Albrecht (European Commission H2020, 2017-19). I also gained experience in studying sugar-protein interactions in University of Nottingham, during a 3-month placement there. These interactions are very relevant to a lot of diseases. My new project aims to bring together the skills I have learned through my research training to address practical problems that affect people’s’ lives.
Dublin, 15th January 2019 – Minister for Trade, Employment, Business, EU Digital Single Market and Data Protection, Pat Breen, T.D., today launched Science Foundation Irelands Plan for 2019 and announced a research investment of €10.8 million in funding for 20 projects in the areas of health, energy, environment, materials and technology. He is pictured with Prof Mark Ferguson, Director General of Science Foundation Ireland and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of Ireland and SFI Starting Investigator Research Grant (SIRG) Awardees. The projects, which will be funded for four years, will support 20 researchers and a further 20 PhD students. [Picture Jason Clarke]By providing a new methodology for rapid diagnosis of bacterial infection, my work will facilitate quicker decision-making on targeted medical treatment strategies for patients. In Ireland this would be particularly valuable for rapid diagnosis of Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections, a significant risk factor for cystic fibrosis patients (as well as others with compromised immune systems). More generally, helping clinicians avoid the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics would help combat the global challenge of increased antibiotic resistance.
This new technology could also be deployed in other scenarios such as detecting bacterial contamination of water supplies.
This award allows me to return to Ireland and make a contribution to Irish society through scientific research, building upon my experience abroad (in Switzerland and the UK). The Starting Investigator Research Grant scheme has given me a fantastic opportunity to begin my independent research programme at a relatively young age in NUI Galway School of Chemistry, and also to work closely with the CÚRAM SFI Centre for Medical Device Research, a hub of expertise in this sector.
Maynooth University and Trinity provided me with excellent training, working alongside supportive researchers, and I now look forward to expanding my network of colleagues in both academia and the medical devices industry, and forging new productive partnerships in the years to come.
My grant also funds me to recruit a PhD student to be part of this interdisciplinary research programme. If you know of any students who would be motivated by this topic, please feel free to get in touch with me.
♫ “Five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred reactions…”
That song from the musical Rent is in my head as I write this post on seasons. It’s a catchy one that brings back memories of my misspent youth hanging out with people who would sing showtunes at the drop of a hat in perfect four-part harmony!
One of the things I love about working in a chemistry lab and constantly making new compounds as part of my research is the beautiful accidental shapes and patterns molecules can assemble into, given enough time – and how our pattern-seeing brains can ascribe poetic meanings to these patterns based on what we want to see! Two recent examples from my own work caught my eye enough recently to pull out a camera and snap a shot. They tell a chronologically-consistent story of the changing seasons, as the colours of Bern’s horizon have changed from auburn to snowy white this last month, I’ve seen fallen leaves and swirls of snow in the bottom of round-bottomed flasks:
Obviously crystals are some of the most beautiful formations that we can see in the lab, with their sparkle and sharp, defined edges: needles, plates, and more complex symmetries. As chemists, we love large ‘single crystals’ which can be subjected to X-ray diffraction experiments to generate the molecular structures which illustrate the pages of so many research articles these days. I had an old starting-material from much of my work in Trinity College Dublin (2,6-Bis(trimethylsilyl)ethynylpyridine, if you must know), which loved to crystallise. I believe I fished out a crystal of it from a reaction mixture once, hoping it would tell me something about a new exciting product, but alas no. Nonetheless, my colleague Dr Salvador Blasco solved this structure, which, despite not telling us anything new, was pleasingly symmetrical:
I often think with wonder about the deep insight of early chemists into the nature of matter that they could be so certain of chemical structures with a small range of tools like melting-points, taste, and a series of tests and probes; we have access to so many techniques nowadays that we take for granted that can show us, atom by atom, how a molecule fits together. So often, the early chemists of a century and more ago were right or close to it based on wisdom intuition and methodical analysis.
With major developments in materials science in recent decades, tools such as Scanning Electron Microscopy and Helium Ion Microscopy have allowed us to look closely at how the surfaces of substances are arranged on a slightly larger scale than single molecules, which can be vital to understanding them. More pertinent to the whimsical theme of of this post is just the fascination you feel when seeing that, on zooming all the way in, the flexible gel-like substance you have made looks like a plate of spaghetti, or a woven cloth. The picture below comes from my Dalton Transactions article, thanks to my collaborators Drs Kotova, Bell and Prof Boland, working at CRANN/AMBER in Trinity College Dublin:
There is beauty and fascination everywhere. It’s just a matter of how far you need to zoom in to see it!
I’ve been aware that “Hornussen” exists since soon after arriving here in Switzerland. It’s been on my list of things to see before I leave, along with other now-ticked-off items (cow fighting, yodelling, Fastnacht, etc.), but I never quite figured out how to find out more about it! Most Swiss have only vaguely heard of it or are derisive of this very rustic old-fashioned game – “It’s just for drunk farmers”, etc.
But time is ticking! So this autumn I finally did some serious googling and found that the Bern Hornussen Club would be having their final game of the season (Schlusshornussen) last Saturday. I convinced a few friends to join me on the Allmend (old commonage) in Wankdorf, and we witnessed the game first-hand.
The ‘launch pad’
Batting team in action
The Allment
More batting
The view down the field
The outfield
Players in the field
Paddles in action
I’ll be honest, the rules are a little unclear and the game is slow, but fundamentally, it requires one team to take turns standing on a mound/putting green/crease, which is equipped with a metal track for the hornuss (‘hornet’, a small black projectile, much like a hockey puck) and hitting it as hard as they can out into the field. The ‘nouss can reach up to 300 km/h and makes an almighty buzz (whence the name). The implement used to hit it resembles nothing more than a fishing rod with a heavy weight on the end. The batter, wraps the flexible pole around their body and uncoils it in a complex motion to drive the ‘nouss with maximum speed. Physique doesn’t seem to be important (much like in darts), but large men definitely got more speed than the few kids who played. I was discussing with my colleague the possible origins of the game, and he was convinced the rod derived from a corn thresher, and that perhaps these were put to use (once the fields were harvested) to knock stones about in the cleared land while drinking and celebrating a successful bounty. Seems as plausible as anything.
In the outfield are a serious of players holding wooden boards fixed to sticks. These are somewhere between mediaeval shields and very-hard catchers’ mits! Mostly the nouss whizzes right by to bury itself in the hill at the distant end of the Allmend field, but occasionally the players can intercept it (and I believe this is how they score points). They are arrayed roughly along a straight line in front of the launchpad and there is something unintentionally comical about the way they toss the paddles upright into the air to try and intercept the nouss. They fall so gracelessly as the players shout to each other, but the thwack when contact is made is very satisfying.
German language Wikipedia tells me that the first mention in the historical record of this game is in the 17th century when two men were fined a significant sum for breaching the sabbath by playing Hornussen on a Sunday, although clearly the game was established enough at that time to not require further explanation in the documents! Switzerland still has remarkably strict rules on Sunday activities (despite low participation in Church attendance), so this is easy to believe.
I can certainly think of worse ways to spend a Saturday morning – just make sure not to get in the way!
A large contingent from the Albrecht research group in Bern made our way down to Lausanne today for the Swiss Chemical Society’s annual Fall Meeting at EPFL. As always, it was a massive meeting, underscoring the impressive amount of chemistry research that goes on in small-but-mighty Switzerland.
The introductory speaker, Prof Emsley, highlighted some unique aspects of Swiss research, including the strong industrial presence in the country (indicated by the generous sponsorship of every session by pharmaceutical and instrumentation companies), as well as the rich international complexion of the researchers who work at the Swiss Universities and companies. More than a quarter of all researchers are non-nationals – and that is a real strength, allowing for diverse workers and ideas to come together from all over Europe and the world. Mobility and openness, in principle, allow the best people to find the best partners for their research and push forward important developments in science.
One of my colleagues presented his recent results (Angewandte Chemie), while seven of us presented posters over the extended lunchtime session. Lots of interesting conversations were had with researchers at other universities, as well as industrial chemists; in Switzerland industrial chemists are well integrated into the professional society (the SCS), which I think is beneficial to all of us, for focussing our targets and sharing the latest advances. Indeed, in addition to leading academics like Prof Karsten Meyer, we also saw presentations from the likes of Syngenta.
We got to socialise a little and explore the EPFL campus after the talks, and, in the Rolex Building, I was lucky enough to run into old friend Marie Curie! I had a colleague snap this photo of me and the other Marie Sklowdowska-Curie Fellow in the Albrecht group with our mentor! She’s everywhere!
I am just after returning from the 43 (and largest ever) International Conference of coordintion Chemistry in Sendai, Japan. This year’s ICCC had an awful lot to offer, with 2,500 of us in the Sendai International Centre, and spread over up to twenty parallel session at times, there is clearly a lot happening in inorganic and coordination at the moment. Some highlights included fascinating molecular machines (with an inspiring closing address from 2016 Nobel laureate Jean-Pierre Sauvage), catalytic approaches to the challenges presented by the need to find new fuel sources for a changing world, new pincer and NHC ligands, luminescent diagnostic probes and therapeutic agents and much much more.
Me speaking from the podium in the Exhibition Hall on Thursday morning
I was privileged to get the chance to present my work in Session 38 “Organometallic complexes for synthesis and polymerisation”, to a room full of my peers and leaders in the field, including people I had interacted with during the week and who came along to see what it is I am up to in my current work! My presentation on the catalytic activity of carbohydrate-functionalised N-heterocyclic carbene complexes went very well and there were even a few useful questions that prompted a bit of discussion afterwards.
After Thursday morning, I could relax a bit more and just enjoy attending the sessions without worrying about perfecting my talk! Luckily that afternoon had also been set aside on the programme for sight-seeing, so I wandered around the site of Sendai Castle and the adjacent shrine with a few other chemists. I also got to sample the regional delicacy of beef tongue and make my own chopsticks from scratch. A nice mix of learning, culture and networking.
I really enjoyed catching up with old colleagues from Europe and the UK and meeting new people from both hemispheres to share ideas with (as well as a fateful trip to karaoke after the conference banquet wrapped up earlier than necessary) as well as the engaging discussions had at the poster sessions. I’m also getting better at asking questions after lectures, as my confidence in the field grows with experience!
Looking forward to the next one in Rimini!
Thanks, of course, to my Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellowship (GLYCONHC) and the European Commission for funding the work which I presented
I am just after returning from the 43 (and largest ever) International Conference of coordintion Chemistry in Sendai, Japan. This year’s ICCC had an awful lot to offer, with 2,500 of us in the Sendai International Centre, and spread over up to twenty parallel session at times, there is clearly a lot happening in inorganic and coordination at the moment. Some highlights included fascinating molecular machines (with an inspiring closing address from 2016 Nobel laureate Jean-Pierre Sauvage), catalytic approaches to the challenges presented by the need to find new fuel sources for a changing world, new pincer and NHC ligands, luminescent diagnostic probes and therapeutic agents and much much more.
Time to Byrne 