Dr Kathy Wu awarded thesis prize by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Dr Kathy Wu, a former PhD student in the CMP cluster, has been awarded the 2025 Royal Society of Chemistry Spectroscopy and Dynamics Group Thesis Prize for her dissertation entitled “Developing a novel radical source for cold, controlled reaction studies”. Kathy completed her PhD as a member of the Cold Chemical Physics lab here in Liverpool, under the supervision of Professor Brianna Heazlewood. Kathy made significant advances in the design, development, and characterisation of a novel magnetic radical filter. She used inhomogeneous magnetic fields and evolutionary strategy optimisation methods to produce beams of atomic and molecular radicals with carefully controlled properties. The approach Kathy pioneered has subsequently been adopted by research groups around the world. Applications of Kathy’s research span the fields of chemical physics, surface science, and atmospheric chemistry. After completing her PhD, Kathy joined the University of Birmingham in late 2024 where she is now a postdoctoral research associate. Congratulations Kathy!