We had a great time in Lausanne for the 7th Psi-k conference, held at the SwissTech Convention Centre, EPFL across 25 to 28 August 2025, with a week full of interesting talks, insightful discussions, and wonderful science! Thank you to the Psi-k organising committee for the excellent event, we very much enjoyed keeping up-to-date with […]
In this study, we uncovered a previously unknown reaction mechanism, showing that CO₂ can react at the interface with similar energetics to the bulk phase. This finding challenges the common assumption that surface reactions are suppressed, and has important implications for climate models and our understanding of carbon uptake by the oceans. Congratulations to Sam, […]
To celebrate Lars’s successful PhD viva, the FAST group headed out to the punts to drift lazily down the River Cam (after all, what better way is there to study water, than to simply float on it?). Much fun was had, with a few of us taking turns to push the really big stick around […]
We decided to take advantage of the great weather, and held a (veggie-friendly) BBQ party at Wolfson College! Some good fun was also had afterwards throwing/kicking a ball around. Congrats to Darren, Joe, and Steffen for recently completing their halfway reports & presentations for the MPhil!
Congratulations to Xavi, who just published his first lead-author paper as ACS Nano (2025) 19, 18, 17728–17737: a major milestone and a fantastic piece of work! In this study, we tackled a long-standing question: how do protons and hydroxide ions behave at the graphene-water interface? While it’s well-known that protons like to hang out at […]
Apparently the parkruns weren’t enough: Christoph, Darren, Isaac, Niamh, and Xavi decided to test their allegiance to the FAST name, and prove themselves at the Cambridge Half-Marathon! We were also joined by Sam Coles from the ICE group. Ultimately, Isaac proved to be the FASTest of us all, clocking in at 01:24:49. Congrats to all […]
To celebrate the upcoming Christmas, we decided to take our theories of solid water and put them into practice – by demonstrating how to skate on it! We were joined also by Hugo Rauch from the ICE group, to make it all the more fitting. Some of us skated around and around in circles at […]
The group is growing FAST: We have five new members this term. Very warm welcome to Ioachim Dusa, Isaac Parker, and Darren Lim who are starting their PhD’s. We are also honoured to have Yixuan Feng & Hubert Beck visiting our group for some time. Continuing our FAST tradition, we’ve convinced some of the new […]
Our latest work, led by Sam and featured on the cover of the JCP, delves into the complexities of the CO₂–H₂O interface using machine-learned potentials. The work, also highlighted in a Scilight article, offers new insights into interfacial tension and CO₂ phase behavior, with implications for climate research and carbon capture technologies.
The question of ion-pairing in sodium chloride has puzzled scientists for decades, with no clear consensus on the relative stability of contact versus solvent-separated ion pairs due to the delicate balance of interactions involved. Published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2024, 15, 23, 6081–6091, our latest research utilizes explicitly-correlated […]