Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford

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Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford

For students, alumni, researchers, prospective members, partners, science communicators and anyone who loves Chemistry.

The Department is one of the leading chemistry research departments in the world with some 80 academic staff leading active research groups and an annual research income of around £17 million. Published rankings regularly place the Department of Chemistry at Oxford in the top ten Chemistry departments worldwide. An exceptionally wide range of research is carried out across all areas of chemistry,

and academic staff actively develop their own independent research programmes alongside a considerable degree of internal and external collaboration.

03/09/2026

Double success for Ewan Forsyth at ViCEPHEC 2026.

Congratulations to Dr Ewan Forsyth, Departmental Lecturer in Practical Chemistry, received both the ViCEPHEC2026 Delegate Poster Prize and the Royal Society of Chemistry Higher Education Group Poster Prize for his interactive poster on a new card-based practical chemistry activity developed at Oxford.

https://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/article/double-prize-for-ewan-forsyth-at-vicephec-2026?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=151

Congratulations to Dr Ewan Forsyth, Departmental Lecturer in Practical Chemistry, who recently received two prizes for his chemical education work at the ViCEPHEC 2026 conference, hosted by the University of Nottingham.

02/09/2026

What really drives the hydration of aromatic molecules?

New research from Oxford, UCL and ISIS reveals the key role of weak hydrogen bonds involving π electrons. These interactions can have a striking effect on properties such as solubility. The study also provides direct experimental evidence of unusual HO···π* interactions in liquids.

Read more:

A group of researchers from the University of Oxford, UCL, and the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source have revealed how weak, non-classical hydrogen bonds help govern the hydration and solubility of aromatic molecules in water. Their results provide new insights into molecular behaviour relevant to biomol...

27/08/2026

Congratulations to Professor Charlotte Williams OBE FRS and Professor Iain McCulloch FRS on receiving Royal Society Awards today.

🎖️Charlotte receives the Armourers & Brasiers’ Company Prize for her work in catalysis and polymer chemistry, including turning waste CO₂ into useful, recyclable materials.

🎖️Iain receives the Hughes Medal for his work on organic semiconductors and clean-energy technologies, including solar-driven hydrogen production.

Great to see recognition of research that combines fundamental chemistry with some of the biggest practical challenges in materials, energy and sustainability.

Read more: https://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/article/charlotte-williams-and-iain-mcculloch-receive-royal-society-awards?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=149

Congratulations to Professor Charlotte Williams OBE FRS and Professor Iain McCulloch FRS, who are among the recipients of this year's Royal Society awards.

21/08/2026

Congratulations to Kieran Agg, who has won the 2026 Katharine Burr Blodgett Award for the best PhD research in colloid and interface science.

Kieran recently completed his DPhil with us, where his research explored how molecules in cellular environments influence interactions, solution structure and biomolecular stability.

Recent Oxford Chemistry DPhil graduate Kieran Agg has been awarded the 2026 Katharine Burr Blodgett Award by the Joint Colloids Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI).

14/08/2026

A new route to modifying synthetic DNA and RNA.

Oxford chemists have developed a new on-support phosphitylation strategy for adding a wide range of chemical groups to oligonucleotides directly during synthesis, avoiding the need to make a specialised building block for every modification.

Published in Nature Chemistry, the work could help expand the range of chemically modified oligonucleotides for chemical biology, molecular diagnostics and nucleic acid therapeutics.

Read more:

A study from the Department of Chemistry, published in Nature Chemistry, reports a versatile new strategy for modifying synthetic oligonucleotides directly during their synthesis. The new approach uses an on-support phosphitylation strategy to overcome key limits of the current gold standard oligonu...

13/08/2026

How can weighing individual molecules help us understand disease?

Professor Philipp Kukura has been awarded a prestigious Royal Society Faraday Discovery Fellowship, worth up to £8 million over 10 years, to develop new technology for measuring the mass of single molecules. Just nine researchers were selected from more than 280 initial applications.

Read more:

Professor Philipp Kukura has today been awarded a prestigious Royal Society Faraday Discovery Fellowship. This award supports exceptional mid-career research leaders to undertake high-quality, original research and build world-leading science teams in the UK.

12/08/2026

Could faster detection help tackle river pollution?

Oxford Chemistry spinout Mode Labs has been awarded £100,000 to develop and trial technology for continuous, real-time monitoring of river pollution.

Its CERES platform could help spot pollution events sooner by bringing laboratory-quality chemical analysis directly into the field.

Read more:

Mode Labs, a spinout from Oxford’s Department of Chemistry, has been awarded £100,000 to develop and trial its CERES autonomous chemical monitoring platform.

06/08/2026

Oxford researchers have secured £3.7 million to evaluate technologies that could detect falsified and substandard vaccines in global supply chains.

The programme will assess rapid screening devices to help regulators and manufacturers identify suspect vaccines, strengthening vaccine safety worldwide.

Read more:

Researchers at the University of Oxford have been awarded £3.7 million to evaluate devices designed to detect substandard and falsified vaccines in supply chains.

03/08/2026

Thinking about studying Chemistry at university?

Our undergraduate admissions video offers an insight into what it's like to study Chemistry at Oxford. Hear from our students and tutors about the course, the tutorial system, research opportunities, and what makes studying Chemistry here unique.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0iVk3b7agM

Find out more:
Why Chemistry at Oxford? www.chem.ox.ac.uk/why-chemistry-at-oxford
Undergraduate study: www.chem.ox.ac.uk/undergraduate-study

Oxford students share what it is really like to study Chemistry at ...

31/07/2026

Researchers at Oxford Chemistry have developed a new Appel fluorination method that unlocks the use of inexpensive potassium fluoride (KF) for the efficient synthesis of alkyl fluorides.

This breakthrough expands the toolkit for fluorination chemistry and could enable more practical routes to valuable molecules used in pharmaceuticals and beyond.

Read more:

Alcohols are among the most abundant building blocks in chemistry. Fluorinated compounds, meanwhile, are essential for many modern medicines, crop protection products and advanced materials. Converting one into the other, however, has traditionally relied on toxic, thermally unstable reagents such a...

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