Allan Ure Bursary
Joanne Wragg (left) receiving the first Allan Ure Bursary from Dr Christine Davidson (right)
(Photograph by Dr Mark Cave)
Dr Allan Ure died in December 2005. In recognition of his great contribution to atomic spectrometry and environmental chemistry, the Atomic Spectroscopy Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Atomic Spectrometry Updates decided to jointly award an annual bursary in his honour. The first award was made in July at the 13th Biennial Atomic Spectroscopy Symposium in Glasgow to Joanne Wragg of the British Geological Survey and was presented on this occasion by Dr Christine Davidson from Strathclyde University, a former co-worker of Allan’s.
Full details of the award scheme and how to apply can be found here.
The 2009 Award
Azlan Kamari using EDXRF in his research studies
The 2009 Allan Ure Bursary has been awarded to Azlan Kamari, a PhD student at the Environmental, Agricultural and Analytical Chemistry Department, University of Glasgow. Azlan is studying the remediation of water and soil contaminated by heavy metals and evaluating the potential of chitosan and its derivatives to remove heavy metals. He is using atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS), energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDXRF) and fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analysis in his studies. Prior to visiting Glasgow for his Ph.D., Azlan was a lecturer in the Chemistry Department at the Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris, Malaysia.
He intends using his bursary to attend the 15th International Conference on Heavy Metals in the Environment (ICHMET), which will be held at Gdansk University of Technology, Poland in September 2010. He will be presenting his paper on "The potential of chitosan and chitosan derivatives as amendments in the remediation of soils contaminated by heavy metals".
The 2008 Award
Nicholas Lloyd of the University of Leicester was awarded the 2008 Allan Ure Bursary. His poster presented at the 2008 BNASS Conference can be seen through the link below:
Isotope ratio mapping of depleted uranium concentrations from the NLI Colonie site [0.99MB]
The 2007 Award
The 2007 award went to Dr Rebeca Santamaria-Fernandez, a senior analyst at LGC, Teddington, UK. A page on the LGC website gives details of Rebeca's career. She used the award to attend the 2008 Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry, as she describes below:
The 2008 annual Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry,
with more than 600 attendees from both academia and industry, took place from the 6th to 13th January 2008 in the picturesque wine-growing region of the Temecula Valley, California (60 miles from San Diego).
The gathering was a great opportunity to meet international scientists experienced in applications, instrumentation, and theory related to plasma sources. The meeting aims to examine recent progress in the field and to stimulate discussion of research interests with experts from all around the world. On Tuesday 8th January, I gave an oral presentation reporting the development of novel approaches for pharmaceutical counterfeit detection combining high accuracy stable isotope ratio measurements and trace metal profiling. A case study for an antiviral drug was discussed and the potential of isotopic fingerprinting to provide forensic evidence was highlighted.
During the week in Temecula Valley I also got the chance to explore the area, discover the seals at La Jolla Beach, have lunch at the famous Coronado Hotel overlooking the Pacific Ocean and enjoy Californian winter warm weather. Many of those "international scientists" have now also become friends and the conference was also a great chance to catch up with many of them and discuss future collaborations.
Once again, I would like to thank the Executive Committee of the Atomic Spectrometry Updates for offering me the Allan Ure Award 2007. Receiving this bursary has been of great benefit to my career. Moreover, it has been a great honour.
The work of Rebeca and her collaborators was also presented as a poster at the 2008 BNASS conference in Brighton, UK and can be downloaded here: