Welcome from the TG Group!

The TG Supramolecular and Medicinal Chemistry Research Group is based in the School of Chemistry, Trinity College Dublin and is at the cutting edge of research into supramolecular structures, sensor design and materials development. The principal investigator is Professor Thorfinnur Gunnlaugsson.

The TG Group is housed in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute (TBSI), as part of the School of Chemistry. The School is divided between several institutes on and near the main campus, such as the Chemistry Building, the Sami Nasr Institute of Advanced Materials (SNIAM), the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN) and TBSI (Map).

Make sure to follow our news and updates below:

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Bláithín’s Outreach Project

As part of her studies, Bláithín helped design an outreach workshop titled “The Chemistry of Being in Two Places at Once”! The aim of the project was to bring the famous Double Slit experiment to secondary school students in a fun, digestible manner. On Wednesday, she went out to test the workshop out on Swords Community College’s 5th Chemistry Class.

A huge thanks to John O’Donoghue for organising the trip and to Swords Community College for hosting!

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Inorganic Ireland Symposium 2023

Members of the Gunnlaugsson group were very thankful to attend this years Inorganic Ireland Symposium (formerly the Greystones meeting) held in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute. Many thanks to Dr. Aidan McDonald for organising and hosting this years symposium, as well as all the helpers involved.

A huge congratulations to Professor Thorfinnur Gunnlaugsson for receiving the ICI David Brown Award.

Congratulations to all the speakers and researchers who presented posters, including three members of our group, Oxana Kotova, Shauna Donohoe, and Helen O’Connor.

An excellent syposium overall, leaving the group delighted and eager fot the next!

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Professor Thorfinnur Gunnlaugsson recieves to ICI David Brown Award

Many congratulations are in order for Professor Thorfinnur Gunnlaugsson as he was awrded the highly prestigious ICI David Brown Award at the 2023 Inorganic Ireland Symposium!

This award was established in 2014 to honour Professor David Brown of University College Dublin in recognition of his enormous contribution to inorganic chemistry both nationally and internationally. This award later began to be presented to a colleague who has made an outstanding contribution to inorganic chemistry.

Professor Gunnlaugsson also delievered a fine talk at the symposium, titled ‘Tails of two endeavours! The application of lanthanides and Ru(II) in the formation of luminescent supramolecular systems.’ As always, Professor Gunnlaugsson continually contributes to the chemical research field with so much zeal and we couldn’t be more thankful for his efforts. Once again, congratulations on this great achievement!

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AMBER Internal Conference 2023

Members of the Gunnlaugsson group were delighted and honoured to attend this years AMBER Internal Conference held in the Strand Hotel in Limerick. Many thanks to Lorraine Byrne, the executive director of the AMBER and CRANN Institute, as well as all the members of AMBER’s staff who aided in organising and hosting this conference.

Well done to Oxana Kotova, Connie Sigurvinsson, Owen Oseghale and Niamh O’Shea for presenting a poster of their own at the poster presentation section of the conference.

Also, congratulations to Tómas Arnar Guðmundsson for delivering an excellent talk titled “Engineered supramolecular gels as functional 3D-printable materials.”

The group is looking forward to seeing what the next AMBER conference holds in store!

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A New Publication in the Journal of Supramolecular Chemistry!

A big congratulations to all the collaborators involved in the newley published paper “Tripodal 1,3,5-benzenetricarboxamide ligand with dipicolinic acid units and its binding with Eu(III) ions,” Supramolecular Chemistry 2023, 1-10 (DOI: 10.1080/10610278.2023.2177162). The work involved the synthesis of tripodal ligands, which was carried out by two visiting students, Niklas Klangwart from Germany and Céline Ruijs from Belgium. Photocatalytic studies in various solvents confirmed luminescent metal-ligand self-assembly species with Eu(III) ions. Crystallography was conducted by a previous group member Dr. Chris Hawes and the collective work was led by Dr. Oxana Kotova, one of our group Post-Docs.

A big thank you to all collaborators and Prof. Thorfinnur Gunnlaugsson for all their efforts in this article, which is also open access!

New PhD Students Join the Group

The group continues to expand with two new PhD students, Bláithín Rawson and Niamh O’Shea!

Bláithín completed her Senior Sophister project with the group, and returned after attaining her B.A. in Medicinal Chemistry here in Trinity. She is continuing in her work on developing novel tetracationic cyclophanes, and probing their host-guest capabilities.

After completing her B.Sc in Physical Sciences and M.Sc in Applied Physics in the University of Limerick, Niamh decided to return to the field of chemistry. She is funded by The Centre of Doctoral Training in the Advanced Characterisation of Materials programme, a project between Trinity College Dublin, University College London, and Imperial College London. She aims to develop mechanically interlocking systems, such as rotaxanes, using the 2,6-Bis(1,2,3-triazol-4-yl)pyridine (btp) motif and lanthanides. With the overall aim of developing novel functional materials for application in imaging, electronic and magnetic devices.

Two New Visiting Students Join!

We’d like to warmly welcome two new visiting students, Julien Rubens and Emeline Cartaud!

Julien joined the group on the 22nd of February and is a Belgian master student from the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain). He chose to do his master the research sector of chemical science and joined the Gunnlaugsson complete his internship. The objective of his project will be focused on the synthesis of brand new macrocycle containing Troger’bases. He hopes to discover new properties with his work on these macrocyclic compounds for the next 4 months.

Emeline joined us on the 1st of March and is a final year French student about to finish her bachelors in chemistry at the University of Toulouse III Paul Sabatier. She also joined the group in order to complete her internship in research. For the next 4 months, she will be working on lanthanide coordination complexes using the bis-triazole pyridines.

We’re very happy to welcome these two onboard!

Patrick and Tómas Receive their Postgraduate Certificate in Statistics from Trinity College Dublin

After many months of hard work our very own Tomas Gudmundsson and Patrick Manning have been awarded their postgraduate certificates in statistics. This is such an important toolkit for any sort of researcher to have. It will be very interesting to see how they implement their newly developed skills in their current and future work!

Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry Conference 2022

Members of the Gunnlaugsson Group were delighted to attend MASC 2022 in the University of Nottingham. A huge thanks to this year’s host, Dr. Ben Pilgrim, for organising a great conference! A fantastic arrangement of talks and posters were presented, representing the scope of the field.

Well done to Dr. Ena Luis, Dr. Helen O’Connor, Patrick Manning, Shauna Donohoe and Tómas Arnar Guðmundsson for presenting their posters, showcasing current work in the group.

Huge congratulations to Tómas for another award for his poster “Engineered Supramolecular Metallogels as Luminescent 3D-Printable Materials.”

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Group Secret Santa

The TG group celebrated the end of the year with a very special guest – the big man himself! He brought along two of his little helpers to assist with giving out the gifts.

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